Re: Deletion of remote branches

[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.

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.