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

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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

More Related Contents:

  1. How do I list all remote branches in Git 1.7+?
  2. How do you create a remote Git branch?
  3. How can I delete all Git branches which have been merged?
  4. Trimming Git Commits/Squashing Git History
  5. What is a tracking branch?
  6. What are the differences between git branch, fork, fetch, merge, rebase and clone?
  7. Listing and deleting Git commits that are under no branch (dangling?)
  8. How do you stop tracking a remote branch in Git?
  9. Show just the current branch in Git
  10. Rebasing a branch including all its children
  11. Using Git, show all commits that are in one branch, but not the other(s)
  12. How to get the changes on a branch in Git
  13. How do I clone all remote branches?
  14. How do I fetch all Git branches?
  15. Can I make fast forwarding be off by default in git?
  16. Creating a new empty branch for a new project
  17. git merge: Removing files I want to keep!
  18. Renaming branches remotely in Git
  19. Switch Git branch without files checkout
  20. Git: How to find out on which branch a tag is?
  21. Renaming a branch in GitHub
  22. Git: Merge a Remote branch locally
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  25. Block a git branch from being pushed
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