Automatic prune with Git fetch or pull

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Since git 1.8.5 (Q4 2013):

“git fetch” (hence “git pull” as well) learned to check “fetch.prune” and “remote.*.prune” configuration variables and to behave as if the “--prune” command line option was given.

That means that, if you set remote.origin.prune to true:

git config remote.origin.prune true

Any git fetch or git pull will automatically prune.

Note: Git 2.12 (Q1 2017) will fix a bug related to this configuration, which would make git remote rename misbehave.
See “How do I rename a git remote?“.

See more at commit 737c5a9:

Without “git fetch --prune“, remote-tracking branches for a branch the other side already has removed will stay forever.
Some people want to always run “git fetch --prune“.

To accommodate users who want to either prune always or when fetching from a particular remote, add two new configuration variables “fetch.prune” and “remote.<name>.prune“:

  • “fetch.prune” allows to enable prune for all fetch operations.
  • “remote.<name>.prune” allows to change the behaviour per remote.

The latter will naturally override the former, and the --[no-]prune option from the command line will override the configured default.

Since --prune is a potentially destructive operation (Git doesn’t keep reflogs for deleted references yet), we don’t want to prune without users consent, so this configuration will not be on by default.

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