Re: [PATCH] branch: introduce --(no-)has-upstream and --(no-)gone options

[Alex Henrie <alexhenrie24@gmail.com>]

On Thu, Feb 16, 2023 at 3:40 PM Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
>
> Konstantin Khomoutov <kostix@bswap.ru> writes:
>
> > Alex Henrie <alexhenrie24@gmail.com> writes:
> >
> >> GitHub and GitLab have features to create a branch using the web
> >> interface, then delete the branch after it is merged. That results in a
> >> lot of "gone" branches in my local clone, and I frequently find myself
> >> typing `git branch -v | grep gone`. I don't want `git branch --merged`
> >> because that would include branches that have been created for future
> >> work but do not yet have any commits.
> >
> > Possibly a rather silly remark, but you could make a habit of periodically
> > running
> >
> >   git remote prune <remotename>
> >
> > or fetching with "--prune".
>
> Likely to be a silly question, but isn't doing that, to actively
> remove the remote tracking branches that correspond to branches that
> no longer exist at the remote, exactly what gives Alex many local
> branches that are marked as "gone" (i.e. forked from some upstream
> sometime in the past, but the upstream no longer exists)?

Yes, the branches are marked [gone] precisely because I configured
fetch.prune to true. So fetching automatically deletes the local
copies of the upstream branches, but the local branches that track
them are still there.

-Alex