How do you remove an invalid remote branch reference from Git?

Question

In my current repo I have the following output:

$ git branch -a * master   remotes/origin/master   remotes/public/master 

I want to delete remotes/public/master from the branch list:

$ git branch -d remotes/public/master error: branch 'remotes/public/master' not found. 

Also, the output of git remote is strange, since it does not list public:

$ git remote show  origin 

How can I delete 'remotes/public/master' from the branch list?

Update, tried the git push command:

$ git push public :master fatal: 'public' does not appear to be a git repository fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly 

Answer 1

You might be needing a cleanup:

git gc --prune=now 

or you might be needing a prune:

git remote prune public 

prune

Deletes all stale tracking branches under <name>. These stale branches have already been removed from the remote repository referenced by <name>, but are still locally available in "remotes/<name>".

With --dry-run option, report what branches will be pruned, but do no actually prune them.

However, it appears these should have been cleaned up earlier with

git remote rm public  

rm

Remove the remote named <name>. All remote tracking branches and configuration settings for the remote are removed.

So it might be you hand-edited your config file and this did not occur, or you have privilege problems.

Maybe run that again and see what happens.

---

Advice Context

If you take a look in the revision logs, you'll note I suggested more "correct" techniques, which for whatever reason didn't want to work on their repository.

I suspected the OP had done something that left their tree in an inconsistent state that caused it to behave a bit strangely, and git gc was required to fix up the left behind cruft.

Usually git branch -rd origin/badbranch is sufficient for nuking a local tracking branch , or git push origin :badbranch for nuking a remote branch, and usually you will never need to call git gc

Answer 2

All you need to do is

git fetch -p 

It'll remove all your local branches which are remotely deleted.

If you are on git 1.8.5+ you can set this automatically

git config fetch.prune true 

or

git config --global fetch.prune true