Remove all your local git branches but keep main
source link: https://dev.to/ben/remove-all-your-local-git-branches-but-keep-main-4e2h
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Posted on Apr 19
Remove all your local git branches but keep main
I frequently search for the code to delete all local branches except master so I can copy/paste the result, but I always get the "master" version of this — which doesn't help the copy/paste part of it.
$ git branch | grep -v "main" | xargs git branch -D
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Here's hoping this becomes the top result so I can speed up my process by one second. We all know I'll never actually remember the command.
Happy coding!
Discussion (15)
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We all know I'll never actually remember the command
maybe an alias?
anyway , thanks for the tip!
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maybe an alias?
That's reasonable. I have aliases for a lot of my more frequent tasks like this. It's irrational in this case so maybe I should just get over this — but I feel a little nervous about making aliases for anything I use infrequently in case I forget what the underlying execution is.
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I second using an alias. If you forget the alias you set, you can do git config -l to list all config values, including aliases, and just scan through them.
Or, if you remember the alias name, you can do get config --get alias.alias-name to show what it's an alias of.
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thanks , I didn't know that... It's useful for more complicated aliases.
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... in case I forget what the underlying execution is.
...because you currently remember it so well that you wrote a post for your own future reference? 😛
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I wrote local-branches-with-missing-remote which helps me keep my local branches tidy.
I run local-branches-with-missing-remote | xargs git branch -D to remove all local branches that had remote branches, but those remote branches are gone.
So, when I merge my PR and Github deletes the branch, I can run the above command and keep my branch list nice and tidy.
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One observation to be made is if you for some reason has another branch that has "main" as part of its name, this command would not delete it. Maybe grep -v "^\*\? *main$", but then its getting already too complicated... 😅
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You can create an alias function like this:
removeLocals = "!f() { git branch | grep -v "main" | xargs git branch -D; }; f"
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used: git removeLocals
or if you want to account for master vs main
removeLocals = "!f() { git branch | grep -v /"$1/" | xargs git branch -D; }; f"
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used: git removeLocals main
I recommend not doing the second one as you may accidentally remove your local version of main/master due to a typo
You could also just make two aliases removeLocalsMain and removeLocalsMaster
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Nice use of pipes 🦄
The only potential "problem" with the capital D option is that it's a force delete (unlike -d), regardless of any merged status or other potential state.
You might end up desynchronizing remote and local repos and lose any change you made but I guess it's the purpose here. May I ask you the exact context to use it? What do you typically do before/after running thing command?
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Every time I successfully use xargs I spend the next several hours thinking "whoa, I did an xargs". It somehow never gets old.
Solid xargs, good stuff.
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Ha, nice :)
For extra coolness, especially when processing files with whitespace, I have trained my muscle memory to use:find ... -print0 | xargs -0 ...
replacing the whitespace separator with ASCII NUL.
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Nice. Just one thing; it only deletes local ones.
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i think instead of main $(git_main_branch) should be helpful
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That's a great tip! Thanks!
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