HOWTO: git - remove those pesky remotes/origin/

Often people create branches to fix various bugs or implement various features, and publish those to a public repository to be pulled in the official repository (e.g. pull requests in the github model).

The problem is that after the fix is merged the local repo still has the branch that tracks the origin (your public repository).

To remove the local branch it is simple:

git branch -d feature_x

To remove the actual branch in the remote repository:

git push origin --delete feature_x

But, still the local tracking branches remain, those pesky 'remotes/origin/feature_x'. Here is an example from one of my repos:

$ git branch -a
  activestate
  master
  next
* py.test
  sysplatformtest
  remotes/activestate/master
  remotes/origin/HEAD -> origin/master
  remotes/origin/appauthor-fallback
  remotes/origin/linux-fixes
  remotes/origin/master
  remotes/origin/next
  remotes/origin/py.test
  remotes/origin/root-directories
  remotes/origin/sysplatformtest
  remotes/origin/wrapper-defaults

All of those can be removed with this command:

git remote prune origin

 And the output for my appdirs repository is:

Pruning origin
URL: git@github.com:eddyp/appdirs.git
 * [pruned] origin/appauthor-fallback
 * [pruned] origin/linux-fixes
 * [pruned] origin/next
 * [pruned] origin/root-directories
 * [pruned] origin/sysplatformtest
 * [pruned] origin/wrapper-defaults

Which, finally removes those damned refs:

$ git branch -a
  activestate
* master
  py.test
  remotes/activestate/master
  remotes/origin/HEAD -> origin/master
  remotes/origin/master
  remotes/origin/py.test

Great!

Update 2013-07-24:  There have been also other solutions proposed in the comments section. I am quoting them here for better visibility.

Besides the solution I proposed, people commented about other alternatives for pruning remote branches, by using git fetch --prune or by using git-push's --prune option.

Brice provided a method to remove specific branches one by one with git branch -dr command:

git branch -dr origin/foo

What is ironic is that in the past I have used this format, and before writing the original article I was looking for this, but haven't found it that easily. I hope this article will help some other poor soul or myself in the future.