When working with feature branches, stale branches pile up over time. It's best to remove them right after merge, locally and on the remote, but it is a little tedious: you need to remember it, and perform the few steps manually each time.
Enter Git hooks. The folks at Liquid Light have built a little post-merge hook that will delete a feature branch on confirmation Show archive.org snapshot .
Quick aside: Git hooks location
Git hooks are normally stored in the current repository, at .git/hooks/. They are not checked in and will not be shared with others.
If you prefer to manage your hooks globally, i.e. have a single set of hooks that applies to all your repositories, you can
change the Git hooks location
Show archive.org snapshot
: git config --global core.hooksPath /path/to/my/centralized/hooks.
The post-merge hook
Create a post-merge file in your hooks directory (see above). Paste this:
#!/bin/bash
exec < /dev/tty
# Get the current branch name
branch_name=$(git branch --show-current)
# Get the name of the branch that was just merged
reflog_message=$(git reflog -1)
merged_branch_name=$(echo $reflog_message | cut -d" " -f 4 | sed "s/://")
if [[ "$merged_branch_name" == "@{-1}" ]]; then
# Somebody merged "-", the previous branch. Resolve it to the actual branch
# name.
merged_branch_name=$(git name-rev @{-1} --name-only)
fi
# Don't offer branch deletion for some branch names
if [[ "$merged_branch_name" =~ ^(master|main|production|Fast-forward)$ ]]; then
exit 0
fi
# Begin output
echo " "
echo "> You have just merged the branch \"$merged_branch_name\" into \"$branch_name\". "
# Ask the question
read -p "> Do you want to push \"$branch_name\" + delete the \"$merged_branch_name\" branch? (y/N) " answer
if [[ "$answer" == "y" ]]; then
git push
# Delete the local branch
git branch -d $merged_branch_name
echo "> Deleting remote branch ..."
git push origin --delete $merged_branch_name
exit 1
else
echo "x Did not delete the \"$merged_branch_name\" branch."
fi
Save the file and make it executable: chmod +x path/to/post-merge
Now, after merging a branch, you will be asked if you would like to have the branch deleted:
$ git merge ds/foo
Updating 338e82e38..2d4269c81
Fast-forward
foo | 0
1 file changed, 0 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
create mode 100644 foo
> You have just merged the branch "ds/foo" into "master".
> Do you want to push "master" + delete the "ds/foo" branch? (y/N) y
To github.com
abc123..def456 master -> master
Deleted branch ds/foo (was 2d4269c81).
Deleting remote branch ...
- [deleted] ds/foo
