CODEWITHSUNDEEP
git
Tower
Tower

Reputation: 102795

Can I safely remove my Git topic branch that has been merged into master?

If I have created and pushed a topic branch that has been merged to master long time ago, can I safely just run git push origin :foobranch without fearing that it somehow deletes data that is merged to master or some other branch?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1108

Answers (4)

Mark Longair
Mark Longair

Reputation: 467231

Yes, you can safely delete a branch that has been merged into another branch. Branches are like movable pointers into the commit graph, and if you delete a branch, it's just removing that pointer. The commit graph remains, and in your case the master branch will still contain the history of the branch you've removed.

Upvotes: 2

c00kiemon5ter
c00kiemon5ter

Reputation: 17624

deleting a commit or a branch won't affect other commits on other branches, even if that commit was shared among branches, or the branch was merged into other branches.

Upvotes: 1

fge
fge

Reputation: 121720

It is perfectly safe.

Any commit is linked to a tree (ie, your project files), and potentially, several commits point to the same tree. It is only when no commit links to a tree anymore that it may be garbage collected.

If you still need to recollect it somehow and don't even have a local ref to the commit, there is the reflog, which is cleaned up only after 90 days (I think) by default.

Upvotes: 1

KingCrunch
KingCrunch

Reputation: 131891

As long as there are no outstanding commits, its safe. If you want to be sure

git checkout master
git merge foobranch

This should result in a fast-forward merge (that does not affect the history). If not, maybe there were unmerged commits. However, now you are completely safe

git branch -d foobranch
git push origin :foobranch

Upvotes: 2

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