Deleting Branches

Why Delete Branches?

Branches are great for working on features, bug fixes, or experiments.
But once a branch has served its purpose (for example, a feature is merged into main), it’s a good idea to delete it.
This keeps your repository clean and avoids confusion.

Deleting Local Branches

A local branch exists only on your computer.

Delete a Local Branch (Safe)

git branch -d <branch-name>

• Deletes the branch only if it has been fully merged into your current branch.
• Prevents you from accidentally deleting work that hasn’t been saved elsewhere.

Example:

git branch -d feature/login

Force Delete a Local Branch

git branch -D <branch-name>

• Force deletes the branch, even if it hasn’t been merged.
• Use with caution! You could lose work.

Example:

git branch -D old-experiment

Deleting Remote Branches

A remote branch is a branch stored on a remote server (like GitHub or GitLab), usually shared with others.

Delete a Remote Branch

git push origin --delete <branch-name>

• Tells the remote server to remove the branch.
• Other collaborators will no longer see this branch after they fetch or pull.

Example:

git push origin --delete feature/login

What Happens After Deletion?

• Local deletion only affects your copy of the repository.
• Remote deletion removes the branch for everyone, but others may still have a local copy until they delete it themselves.
• Deleting a branch does not delete the commits—they remain in the repository history unless they are unreachable from any branch or tag.

Common Scenarios

• After merging a feature branch:
  Delete the feature branch to keep your branch list tidy.
• Abandoned or stale branches:
  Remove branches that are no longer needed to avoid confusion.

Safety Tips

• Always make sure a branch is merged (or you no longer need its changes) before deleting.
• Use git branch to list local branches and git branch -a to see all branches.
• If you accidentally delete a branch, you can often recover it using git reflog (as long as the commits haven’t been garbage collected).

Tip:
Regularly clean up old branches to keep your repository organized and easy to