Re: Deletion of remote branches

["Philip Oakley" <philipoakley@iee.org>]

From: "Junio C Hamano" <gitster@pobox.com>
> Jens Hausherr <Jens.Hausherr@xing.com> writes:
>
>> I came across an issue with deleting remote branches: When deleting a
>> branch using "git branch ­r ­d <branch>" the branch is deleted and no
>> longer shown by "git branch ­r".
>>
>> "git ls-remote --heads" on the other hand still lists the ref for the 
>> last
>> branch commit.
>>
>> If I delete the branch using "git push origin :<branch>" the branch 
>> is
>> removed completely (i.e. git ls-remote  no longer returns a ref).
>
> All of the above are expected and working as designed.  Remote
> tracking branches are local _copies_ of what you have over there at
> the remote repository. The latter is the authoritative version, and
> you asked "ls-remote" to go over the network to view them.
>
Is there a definitive naming convention for the two types of 'remote 
branch'?

IIRC (somewhere) the 'tracking' term was to be deprecated, though it is 
still in common use. It is usually only the context that clarifies if it 
is the local or the distant copy/repo.

Distinct names make for less confusion.

> If you are trying to remove the branches you show to others and
> yourself who are observing that remote repository from your local
> workstation, you can first "git push origin :<branch>" to remove it
> in the remote repository. You can run your next fetch with "--prune"
> to get rid of remotes/origin/<branch>, I think.
>

Philip