How to get rid of tracking branch?

Johannes Sixt· Feb 14, 2007, 13:24 UTC · lore

Call me clueless, but how the heck do I get rid of a tracking remote branch? I've cloned a repo locally, but in the clone I don't want to track all the topic branches of the origin. But git branch -d keeps saying it doesn't find the remote branch:

$ git version
git version 1.5.0
$ git clone mingw-git/ mingw-git2
[... all looks fine ...]
$ cd mingw-git2/
$ git branch -a
* devel
  origin/HEAD
  origin/devel
  origin/master
  origin/origin
  origin/repo-devel
$ git branch -d origin/repo-devel
error: branch 'origin/repo-devel' not found.
$ git branch -d remotes/origin/repo-devel
error: branch 'remotes/origin/repo-devel' not found.
$ git branch -d heads/remotes/origin/repo-devel
error: branch 'heads/remotes/origin/repo-devel' not found.
$ git branch -d refs/heads/remotes/origin/repo-devel
error: branch 'refs/heads/remotes/origin/repo-devel' not found.

How do I delete remote branches? Do I have to

 rm .git/refs/heads/remotes/origin/repo-devel

(I know I have to update the config, too, so that the next pull doesn't draw the branch in again, but I haven't done that at this point.)

-- Hannes

Andy Parkins· Feb 14, 2007, 13:35 UTC · re: Johannes Sixt · lore

Re: How to get rid of tracking branch?

On Wednesday 2007 February 14 13:24, Johannes Sixt wrote:

> Call me clueless, but how the heck do I get rid of a tracking remote
> branch? I've cloned a repo locally, but in the clone I don't want to
> track all the topic branches of the origin. But git branch -d keeps
> saying it doesn't find the remote branch:

 $ git branch -r -d origin/repo-devel

I suffered the same thing a while ago :-)

Andy

-- 
Dr Andy Parkins, M Eng (hons), MIEE
andyparkins@gmail.com

Junio C Hamano· Feb 14, 2007, 17:04 UTC · re: Andy Parkins · lore

Re: How to get rid of tracking branch?

Andy Parkins <andyparkins@gmail.com> writes:

Show 9 quoted lines

> On Wednesday 2007 February 14 13:24, Johannes Sixt wrote:
>> Call me clueless, but how the heck do I get rid of a tracking remote
>> branch? I've cloned a repo locally, but in the clone I don't want to
>> track all the topic branches of the origin. But git branch -d keeps
>> saying it doesn't find the remote branch:
>
>  $ git branch -r -d origin/repo-devel
>
> I suffered the same thing a while ago :-)

I think you would also need to futz with remote.origin.fetch that says "track all branches from remote", or your next pull will re-create them.

You probably have

	[remote "origin"]
        	url = ...
                fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*
	[branch "master"]
        	remote = origin
                merge = refs/heads/master

You would change it to list the branch you want to track explicitly:

	[remote "origin"]
        	url = ...
                fetch = refs/heads/master:refs/remotes/origin/master

However, this has a subtle side effect. If you create a new branch, say "test", running "git pull" while on "test" will merge "master". This is not wrong per-se (it has been the traditional git-pull behaviour and if you want to use the remote branch that is not the one first listed on remote.origin.fetch line, you can set up branch.test.merge yourself), but it may surprise you because it is different when you use the globbing refspec on the remote.origin.fetch line.

So if you want to track only two remote branches, say 'master' and 'dev', and if you want to also have your own 'master' and 'dev' that builds on them, you would have something like:

	[remote "origin"]
        	url = ...
                fetch = refs/heads/master:refs/remotes/origin/master
                fetch = refs/heads/dev:refs/remotes/origin/dev
	[branch "master"]
        	remote = origin
                merge = refs/heads/master
	[branch "dev"]
        	remote = origin
                merge = refs/heads/dev

Then while on 'master', "git pull" will fetch from origin and merge their 'master' in, and while on 'dev' "git pull" will merge their 'dev' in.