Deleting a remote branch

Question

When I perform branch -a:

$ git branch -a
* master
 remotes/origin/HEAD -> origin/master
 remotes/origin/hello
 remotes/origin/master

And then I remove the branch:

$ git branch -r -D origin/hello
Deleted remote branch origin/hello (was c0cbfd0).

Now I see:

$ git branch -a
* master
 remotes/origin/HEAD -> origin/master
 remotes/origin/master

The branch "hello" has been removed. But when I fetch:

$ git fetch
From localhost:project
 * [new hello]      hello     -> origin/hello

$ git branch -a
* master
 remotes/origin/HEAD -> origin/master
 remotes/origin/hello
 remotes/origin/master

I'm so confused.
I think it has been removed, but it is still there.

Answer 1

You need to remove it from the remote with the following command:

git push origin --delete hello

When you are running git branch -rd origin/hello you are deleting your local branch only. The code above removes it from the origin repo.

Answer 2

To delete a remote branch, use

git push origin :remotebranch

Everything else operates on the local repository only. In more recent versions of git, you can also

git push origin --delete remotebranch

As per the documentation, --delete means the same "as prefixing all refs with a colon".

If you are wondering about meaning of the :, it follows the standard syntax for push. Usually, you would write

git push origin localbranch:remotebranch

but here, you replace localbranch with "nothing", effectively deleting the remote branch.