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@leoapost
Created December 17, 2012 13:55
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Delete all remote branches, except master
# Replace REMOTE_NAME with your remote name (e.g. origin)
git branch -r | grep REMOTE_NAME/ | grep -v 'master$' | grep -v HEAD| cut -d/ -f2 | while read line; do git push REMOTE_NAME :$line; done;
@breezewish
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breezewish commented May 30, 2018

in MacOS, use sed -E "s/^[[:space:]]*REMOTE_NAME\///g", also git push command could be git push REMOTE_NAME :heads/$line in case of tags with same name.

For copy-pasters:

REMOTE_NAME=xxxxx
git branch -r | grep "${REMOTE_NAME}/" | grep -v 'master$' | grep -v HEAD | sed -E "s/^[[:space:]]*${REMOTE_NAME}\///g" | while read line; do git push $REMOTE_NAME :heads/$line; done;

@TimoRoth
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Just use -f2- instead of just -f2 to fix the branches with / in them.

@mbdevpl
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mbdevpl commented Aug 21, 2018

Hmm... but git push accepts many branches at the same time (e.g. git push origin :devel :experimental :blah), so you can simply do:

REMOTE="origin"
git branch -r |  grep "^  ${REMOTE}/" | sed "s|^  ${REMOTE}/|:|" | grep -v "^:HEAD" | grep -v "^:master$" | xargs git push ${REMOTE}

@Moriarty16
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Perfect idea. Save a lot of work.
And to be cautious, perhaps do git branch -r | grep REMOTE_NAME/ | grep -v 'master$' | grep -v HEAD| cut -d/ -f2 | while read line; do echo $line; done; before delete.

@apoorv-mishra
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Might want to try git branch -r | grep origin/ | grep -v 'master$' | grep -v HEAD | cut -d/ -f2 | parallel git push origin --delete, which is faster. Refer https://www.gnu.org/software/parallel/.

@kirtangajjar
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@leoapost This command does not work for branches with / in its name. To fix this, you need to replace cut -d/ -f2 with cut -d/ -f2-

git branch -r | grep REMOTE_NAME/ | grep -v 'master$' | grep -v HEAD| cut -d/ -f2- | while read line; do git push REMOTE_NAME :$line; done;

@xhliu
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xhliu commented Jan 7, 2019

Works gr8, thanks 4 sharing.

@vinayf
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vinayf commented Feb 21, 2019

Sweeeeet, thanks for sharing!

@VishwasShashidhar
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This is great! Thank you for sharing!

@mohshannan
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Thanks for sharing

@marnee01
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Thanks to the OP and others who added additional info. Very helpful!

@jmsalcido
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thanks

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