When to delete branches in Git?

Suppose we have an application that's stable.

Tomorrow, someone reports a big ol' bug that we decide to hotfix right away. So we create a branch for that hotfix off of "master", we name it "2011_Hotfix", and we push it up so that all of the developers can collaborate on fixing it.

We fix the bug, and merge "2011_Hotfix" into "master" as well as into the current development branch. And push "master."

What do we do with "2011_Hotfix" now? Should it just sit out there as a branch forever until the end of time or should we now delete it, since it has served its purpose? It seems unclean to just leave branches lying around everywhere, as the list of branches will likely become very long, most of which aren't even necessary anymore.

In the event that it should be deleted, what will happen to its history? Will that be maintained, even though the actual branch is no longer available? Also, how would I remove a remote branch?

You can safely remove a branch with git branch -d yourbranch. If it contains unmerged changes (ie, you would lose commits by deleting the branch), git will tell you and won't delete it.

So, deleting a merged branch is cheap and won't make you lose any history.

To delete a remote branch, use git push origin :mybranch, assuming your remote name is origin and the remote branch you want do delete is named mybranch.

What you need to do is tag anything that you release. Keep branches around for when you are actively developing.

Delete old branches with

git branch -d branch_name

Delete them from the server with

git push origin --delete branch_name

or the old syntax

git push origin :branch_name

which reads as "push nothing into branch_name at origin".

That said, as long as the DAG (directed acyclic graph) can point to it, the commits will be there in history.

Google "git-flow" and that may give some more insight on release management, branching and tagging.

Since the question has the "github" tag, I'd also add this: specifically in Github, if you pull-request a branch and it gets merged (either via the UI or by merging the pull request's branch), you won't lose the pull request data (including comments), even if you remove the branch.

A consequence of this: If you incorporate pull requests as a part of your workflow (which blends sweetly with code reviews), you can safely delete branches as soon as they get merged. This is so commonplace that recently Github added a (sweet) feature that pops a "delete branch" button right after you merge a pull request.

But it is worth noticing that each group should adopt the workflow that suits it best (and it may or may not lead to deleting such branches). My current work team, for example, prunes all branches that are not master or deployment-related (e.g., production, staging, etc.) as soon as their pull requests gets merged, and we still have full tracking of how the related commits formed each incremental improvement of each product.

Of course no history management (pull requests or otherwise) replaces proper tagging of versions (which you preferably automate with the same tool/script that deploys/packages a version), so you can always fast-switch to whatever your users happen to be on at a given moment. Tagging is also the key to solve your original problem: if you establish that any branch merged to the "work" branches can and should be deleted, and that any one that is merged to a version tag, "production", etc. should not, you'll always have the hotfixes alive until they are integrated in a future version.

I would add that the disadvantage of deleting branches is that you will break any hyperlinks to those branches on GitHub (this question is tagged github). You'll get a 404 Not Found error for those links. This is why I change my links to point to a commit or tag after I delete a branch on GitHub.

Because some links can't be changed, such as in email, I now avoid hyperlinking to GitHub branches entirely and link to a commit or tag from day one.

I prefer to delete branches after they're merged in. This prevents the visual clutter of a long list of branches in your repository. These branches also get propagated to all of the repository's forks.

First I delete my local branch. This prevents it from being accidentally pushed later.

git branch -d branchName

Then I delete the remote tracking branch

git branch -dr remoteName\branchName

Then I delete the branch on GitHub. I use the web interface, but the equivalent command is below.

git push remoteName :branchName

Even if the branch is never merged, typically I would still like to keep the commits around for posterity. However I still like to delete the branch. To spread the commits around and to keep them from being eaten by the garbage collector, I make an annotated tag pointing to the same commit as the deleted branch.

git tag -a tagName commitOrBranchName

Then I push the tag to github

git push remoteName tagName

It seems that you want to delete the 2011_Hotfix branch without losing its history. I will discuss deletion first and history second.

The usual git branch deletion methods have already been described above, and they work as expected. git does not have a one or two word command that means, "Hey git, delete both the local and remote branch." But this behavior can be mimicked via shell script. For example, take Zach Holman's shell script 'git-nuke'. It is very simple:

#!/bin/sh
git branch -D $1
git push origin :$1

Put this in an executable file (e.g., git-nuke) in one of your $PATH directories. If you're not on the 2011_Hotfix branch, you simply running git-nuke 2011_Hotfix will delete both the local and remote branches. This is much faster & simpler--though perhaps more dangerous--than the standard git commands.

Your concern about preserving history is a good one. In this case, you needn't be worried. Once you merge 2011_Hotfix onto master, all commits from 2011_Hotfix will be added to master's commit history. In short, you will not lose history from a simple merge.

I have one more word to add that is perhaps beyond the scope of your question, but is relevant nonetheless. Let's imagine that there are 20 tiny, "work-in-progress" commits on 2011_Hotfix; however, you want only one complete commit for 2011_Hotfix to be added to master's history. How do you combine all 20 small commits into one big commit? Fortunately, git allows you to consolidate multiple commits into one commit by using git-rebase. I won't explain here how that works; though, if you're interested, the documentation for git-rebase is excellent. Do note that git rebase rewrites history, so it should be used judiciously, especially if you are new to it. Finally, your 2011_Hotfix scenario is about a dev team, not a solo dev. If project team members use git rebase, it is wise for the team to have explicit guidelines on the use of git rebase in order that some cowboy dev on the team doesn't unwittingly damage a project's git's history.

If it's been successfully merged back and maybe even tagged then I would say it has no use anymore. So you can safely do git branch -d branchname.

If you want to prune local branches that have been removed from origin, you can also prune, while using git fetch

git fetch --prune

You can delete branches in all major web UIs such as github, BitBucket. After deleting the branch online, you can delete the local branch using

git remote prune origin