In our workflow, development branches which are production-ready get pushed to the remote tracking repository where they are merged into master. The branch is deleted when the tests pass.
I have been bad about deleting my local version of those development branches, so now I have many local branches which don't have a corresponding branch on origin.
Is there a quick way to find which branches in my repository have already been deleted from the remote repository?
Assuming that the original poster means he wants to delete local branches under refs/heads and not remote-tracking branches under refs/remotes/origin, then to find branches that have already been merged into origin/master, simply use the following:
# Fetch latest copy of origin/master
$ git fetch origin
# Find merged branches
$ git branch --merged origin/master
The output will show you branches which have been merged nto origin/master, and are thus safe to delete with git branch -d <branch>. From the official Linux Kernel Git documentation for git branch:
"--merged" is used to find all branches which can be safely deleted, since those branches are fully contained by HEAD.
If, on the other hand, the original poster meant that he wanted to delete his remote-tracking branches, then simply pass the -p or --prune flags to git fetch:
$ git fetch -p origin
From the official Linux Kernel Git documentation for git fetch:
After fetching, remove any remote-tracking branches which no longer exist on the remote.
git fetch -p
From the manual:
-p, --prune After fetching, remove any remote-tracking branches which no longer exist on the remote.
