How do you stop tracking a remote branch in Git?

Question

How do you stop tracking a remote branch in Git?

I am asking to stop tracking because in my concrete case, I want to delete the local branch, but not the remote one. Deleting the local one and pushing the deletion to remote will delete the remote branch as well:

• How do I delete a Git branch both locally and in GitHub?

Can I just do git branch -d the_branch, and it won't get propagated when I later git push?

Will it only propagate if I were to run git push origin :the_branch later on?

Answer 1

As mentioned in Yoshua Wuyts' answer, using git branch:

git branch --unset-upstream

Other options:

You don't have to delete your local branch.

Simply delete the local branch that is tracking the remote branch:

git branch -d -r origin/<remote branch name>

-r, --remotes tells git to delete the remote-tracking branch (i.e., delete the branch set to track the remote branch). This will not delete the branch on the remote repo!

See "Having a hard time understanding git-fetch"

there's no such concept of local tracking branches, only remote tracking branches.
So origin/master is a remote tracking branch for master in the origin repo

As mentioned in Dobes Vandermeer's answer, you also need to reset the configuration associated to the local branch:

git config --unset branch.<branch>.remote
git config --unset branch.<branch>.merge

Remove the upstream information for <branchname>.
If no branch is specified it defaults to the current branch.

(git 1.8+, Oct. 2012, commit b84869e by Carlos Martín Nieto (carlosmn))

That will make any push/pull completely unaware of origin/<remote branch name>.

Answer 2

The simplest way is to edit .git/config

Here is an example file

[core]
        repositoryformatversion = 0
        filemode = true
        bare = false
        logallrefupdates = true
        ignorecase = true
[remote "origin"]
        url = [email protected]:repo-name
        fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*
[branch "test1"]
        remote = origin
        merge = refs/heads/test1
[branch "master"]
        remote = origin
        merge = refs/heads/master

Delete the line merge = refs/heads/test1 in the test1 branch section

Answer 3

This is not an answer to the question, but I couldn't figure out how to get decent code formatting in a comment above... so auto-down-reputation-be-damned here's my comment.

I have the recipe submtted by @Dobes in a fancy shmancy [alias] entry in my .gitconfig:

# to untrack a local branch when I can't remember 'git config --unset'
cbr = "!f(){ git symbolic-ref -q HEAD 2>/dev/null | sed -e 's|refs/heads/||'; }; f"
bruntrack = "!f(){ br=${1:-`git cbr`};  \
    rm=`git config --get branch.$br.remote`; \
    tr=`git config --get branch.$br.merge`; \
    [ $rm:$tr = : ] && echo \"# untrack: not a tracking branch: $br\" && return 1; \
    git config --unset branch.$br.remote; git config --unset branch.$br.merge; \
    echo \"# untrack: branch $br no longer tracking $rm:$tr\"; return 0; }; f"

Then I can just run

$ git bruntrack branchname

Answer 4

Local-tracking branches

If you're talking about local branches (e.g. main, dev) that are configured to push-to and pull-from an upstream [remote branch], then you can disable that with:

❯ git branch --unset-upstream <LOCALBRANCH>

E.g.:

❯ git branch --unset-upstream dev
❯ git branch --unset-upstream feature-x

---

Remote-tracking branches

If you're talking about branches of the name <REMOTE>/<BRANCH> (e.g. origin/main, origin/dev) that show up in your git log (and .git/refs/remotes/<REMOTE>/ directory) showing you the state of a remote branch, then you can stop having it "tracked" (having it updated) by overwriting the current list of held remote-tracking branches with your own new custom list:

❯ git remote set-branches <REMOTE> [<REMOTE-BRANCH> …]

If additionally, you don’t want to see those remote-tracking branches anymore in your git log (and .git/refs/remotes/<REMOTE>/ directory), then you can remove them with:

❯ git branch --delete --remotes -- <REMOTE>/<BRANCH>
Deleted remote-tracking branch <REMOTE>/<BRANCH> (was 1f1a655).

E.g.:

# keep tracking `origin/main`, and `origin/dev`,
# untrack all other `origin/*` remote branches
❯ git remote set-branches origin main dev

# delete remote branches previously tracked, from the
# `.git/refs/remotes/<REMOTE>/` directory
❯ git branch --delete --remotes -- origin/feature-x origin/feature-y
❯ git branch --delete --remotes -- origin/hotfix-z

---

Stale Remote branches

Finally, if there are remote branches that have been removed from the remote repository itself (have become stale), and you want to update your local repository to reflect that, then you can by deleting (pruning) them:

# automatically
❯ git remote prune <REMOTE>
Pruning <REMOTE>
URL: <REMOTEURL>
 * [pruned] <REMOTE>/<BRANCH>

...or

# manually
❯ git branch --delete --remotes -- <REMOTE>/<BRANCH>
Deleted remote-tracking branch <REMOTE>/<BRANCH> (was 1f1a655).

---

PS

You can check the state of tracking with:

❯ git remote show <REMOTE>

E.g.:

❯ git remote show origin
* remote origin
  Fetch URL: /Users/johndoe/bare-remote
  Push  URL: /Users/johndoe/bare-remote
  HEAD branch: ant
  Remote branches:
    brooms  tracked
    bull    tracked
    cat     tracked
    deer    tracked
    dog     tracked
    foxy    tracked
    john    tracked
    master  tracked
    new     tracked
    tim     tracked
    timothy tracked
  Local branches configured for 'git pull':
    ant    merges with remote ant
    master merges with remote master
  Local refs configured for 'git push':
    ant    pushes to ant    (up to date)
    master pushes to master (up to date)

---

• git-remote(1):

  set-branches: Changes the list of branches tracked by the named remote. This can be used to track a subset of the available remote branches after the initial setup for a remote.

  prune: Deletes stale references associated with . By default, stale remote-tracking branches under are deleted, but depending on global configuration and the configuration of the remote we might even prune local tags that haven't been pushed there.

  show: Gives some information about the remote .

• git-branch(1):

  --unset-upstream: Remove the upstream information for .

  --delete: Delete a branch.

  --remotes: List or delete (if used with -d) the remote-tracking branches.

Answer 5

git branch --unset-upstream stops tracking all the local branches, which is not desirable.

Remove the [branch "branch-name"] section from the .git/config file followed by

git branch -D 'branch-name' && git branch -D -r 'origin/branch-name'

works out the best for me.

Answer 6

The easiest way to do this is to delete the branch remotely and then use:

git fetch --prune (aka git fetch -p)

Answer 7

To remove the association between the local and remote branch run:

git config --unset branch.<local-branch-name>.remote
git config --unset branch.<local-branch-name>.merge

Optionally delete the local branch afterwards if you don't need it:

git branch -d <branch>

This won't delete the remote branch.

Answer 8

You can use this way to remove your remote branch

git remote remove <your remote branch name>

Answer 9

To remove the upstream for the current branch do:

$ git branch --unset-upstream

This is available for Git v.1.8.0 or newer. (Sources: 1.7.9 ref, 1.8.0 ref)

source

Answer 10

Here's a one-liner to remove all remote-tracking branches matching a pattern:

git branch -rd $(git branch -a | grep '{pattern}' | cut -d'/' -f2-10 | xargs)

Answer 11

You can delete the remote-tracking branch using

git branch -d -r origin/<remote branch name>

as VonC mentions above. However, if you keep your local copy of the branch, git push will still try to push that branch (which could give you a non-fast-forward error as it did for ruffin). This is because the config push.default defaults to matching which means:

matching - push all matching branches. All branches having the same name in both ends are considered to be matching. This is the default.

(see http://git-scm.com/docs/git-config under push.default)

Seeing as this is probably not what you wanted when you deleted the remote-tracking branch, you can set push.default to upstream (or tracking if you have git < 1.7.4.3)

upstream - push the current branch to its upstream branch.

using

git config push.default upstream

and git will stop trying to push branches that you have "stopped tracking."

Note: The simpler solution would be to just rename your local branch to something else. That would eliminate some potential for confusion, as well.