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git trim

A command to quickly remove merged, pruned, untracked, or stale branches within a Git repository.

Usage

git trim
git trim --pruned
git trim -p
# Removes local branches where its remote branch no longer exists

git trim --merged
git trim -m
# Removes local branches already merged into the current branch

git trim --stale
git trim -s
# Removes local branches without commits in the last 3 months

git trim --untracked
git trim -u
# Removes local branches not tracking a remote branch

git trim --reset[=remote]
# Removes all local branches except those existing on remote which defaults to "origin" (requires confirmation)

git trim --all
# Removes all local branches except the current branch (requires confirmation)

Of course, you may combine these options where appropriate. For example, git trim --merged --stale, would remove both local branches which have been merged with the current branch or are stale.

There are two additional options which may also be combined with the options above: --tracked and --remote.

When the --tracked (or -t) option is used, the remote tracking branch is also removed. For example, git trim --merged --tracked will remove local branches merged into the current branch, and remove the remote branch it's tracking (if any).

When the --remote (or -r) option is used, git trim will remove remote branches instead of local branches. For example, git trim --stale --remote will remove remote branches without commits in the last 3 months (stale local branches will not be removed).

Finally, you may also append the --dry-run option to any git-trim command to simply list the branches which would be deleted instead of actually removing them.

Installation

Basic install

The preferred installation method is to simply save the git-trim script somewhere included in your path. For example, copy git-trim into an existing included path like /usr/local/bin, or add the parent directory to your PATH environment.

Installing via NPM

npm install --global git-trim

Installing via ZSH

Oh-My-Zsh

1. Run: git clone https://github.com/jasonmccreary/git-trim.git $ZSH_CUSTOM/plugins/git-trim
2. Add git-trim to your plugin list: edit ~/.zshrc and change plugins=(...) to plugins=(... git-trim)

Updating

Once installed, the easiest way to update is to overwrite your local copy with the latest contents of the git-trim script.

Updating via NPM

npm update --global git-trim

Updating via ZSH

Oh-My-Zsh

cd $ZSH_CUSTOM/plugins/git-trim
git fetch
git pull

Configuration

By default, git trim will never remove the current branch. However, depending on your branching strategy, you may have additional branches you never want to remove. For example, a dev or staging branch.

If so, you may set a gt.exclude option to your Git configuration, either locally or globally, with a space delimited string of any additional branches you want to exclude from removal.

git config gt.exclude "dev staging"
# Always exclude the "dev" and "staging" branches from removal

Disclaimer

Some of the options in this command remove branches without warning. Once a branch is removed, it might not be recoverable. You are solely responsible when running this command.

Credits

There are thousands of commands and aliases for cleaning up branches sprinkled across the internet. I'll specifically link the commands and posts shared in this Twitter thread, another project for inspiring the name, and git-open which I used as a code reference.

And a special thanks to Caneco for the logo.

Contributing

Feel free to open an issue or pull request to help contribute to the project. Currently the only code style requirement is an indentation of two spaces.

License

Copyright Jason McCreary. Licensed under MIT.