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AlphaFoxtrot
AlphaFoxtrot

Reputation: 684

Having trouble deleting a local branch even after checkout to another branch

I'm trying to delete my local branch and tried most of the solutions I found on here which is to checkout to another branch and then run git branch -D (or -d) <my_branch>. I tried that but I am still getting the same error that states "Cannot delete branch 'my_branch' checked out at 'my_path'

How I got myself in this situation: I branched off of my develop branch by doing git worktree add -b branch_name ../project_name develop. Then I realized I wanted to change my branch name so I deleted the entire directory first by using rm- rf. Now my_path is pointing to a deleted directory so I'm not sure what to do now. Help will be appreciated. I'm running on Windows 7 using Git Bash

Things I have tried:

  1. Restarting my computer
  2. Reinstalling Git Bash
  3. Checkout to another branch and try git branch -d and git branch -D

Screenshot of error: git branch delete error The (virtualBDD) is my virtual environment. You can ignore that.

Upvotes: 23

Views: 40580

Answers (6)

Deepak Badiger
Deepak Badiger

Reputation: 457

Came across this strange git behaviour today and was trying hard to get rid of this error. After going through the thread here, following steps helped me.

  1. git rebase --abort
  2. git checkout some_other_branch
  3. git branch -D branch_to_delete

Upvotes: 2

ChikitoVivas
ChikitoVivas

Reputation: 231

It is also likely that a rebase is currently in progress or a cherry-pick has not been resolved in the branch that it is refusing to delete. In that case you will have to --abort any of those processes:

git rebase --abort

Then use git branch to see your current branch (you likely would have moved back to the branch that refused being deleted and was probably the starting point of your rebase) and git checkout <branchname> to switch branches.

Upvotes: 22

Sunil Nalluru
Sunil Nalluru

Reputation: 484

You can't delete the check out branch. you need to switch to master or any other branch, then delete the required branch.

git switch master

git branch -d <branch_name>

Upvotes: 2

yonran
yonran

Reputation: 19134

I ran into this problem today so I looked where the error was being thrown. “Cannot delete branch '<bname>' checked out at '<worktree>'” (builtin/branch.c) is caused by one of the reasons in (branch.c). Basically you should run git status to find out what applies to you.

  1. Are you trying to delete your current branch? git status will show “On branch <name>”. If so, you have to switch to a different branch first (git switch <other>), or even switch to a detached HEAD commit.
  2. Are you rebasing the branch that you tried to delete? git status will show something about “rebase in progress”. If so, finish rebasing or git rebase --abort.
  3. Are you trying to delete a branch from which you started a git bisect? git status will show “You are currently bisecting, started from branch '<BISECT_START>'.” If so, run git bisect reset.
  4. Are you rebasing with --update-refs? If so, then all the other branches that were checked out in other worktrees when you started rebasing which use any of the rebasing commits cannot be deleted until you finish or abort the git rebase. Again, git status will tell you if you are rebasing, but it does not tell you which other branches update-refs applies to. If you are rebasing, you can find out which branches will be update-refs’d by reading .git/rebase-merge/update-refs (or .git/worktrees/<worktree>/rebase-merge/update-refs).
  5. Repeat steps 1-4 in all your other worktrees (git worktree list) to see why you can’t delete your branch.

Upvotes: 17

AlphaFoxtrot
AlphaFoxtrot

Reputation: 684

Did a bit more browsing and came across this answer that uses git worktree prune to remove information on (non-locked) worktrees that no longer exist. This essentially removed my worktree from git worktree list and then I proceeded to do git branch -d my_branch. This solved my issue. Thanks to everyone that helped.

Upvotes: 14

bk2204
bk2204

Reputation: 76409

You have a worktree for the branch in question checked out in another location and you can't delete that branch until you've removed the worktree.

Git doesn't let you remove a branch that has a worktree associated with it, since that would leave the worktree in a useless and broken state. If you want to delete the branch, you first need to use git worktree remove to remove the given worktree, possibly with -f, and then you'll be able to delete the branch. If you're not sure where your worktree is, you can use git worktree list to find it.

Upvotes: 0

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