When does Git refresh the list of remote branches?

Question

Using git branch --all shows all remote and local branches. When does Git refresh this list?

On pull/push? And how do I refresh it using Git Bash?

Obvolute

As a note, git ls-remote might be interesting here. – Gynoecium

Don't forget to use git fetch before git branch --all – Demagoguery

git pull --all --prune does the trick for me – Web

Answer 1

To update the local list of remote branches:

git remote update origin --prune

To show all local and remote branches that (local) Git knows about:

git branch -a

Viand

git remote update origin --prune is what I was looking for thx – Grison

On the difference between this answer, which uses git remote update, and the accepted answer, which uses git fetch, see here – Lucchesi

this is the correct answer. git fetch did not remove my local cache of remote branches. Only --prune was able to clean it all up. – Navel

You can have git automatically do this with git config remote.origin.prune true – Hackney

git remote prune origin has the same effect and you type less. – Rauscher

@Rauscher the OP asked for a refresh of the list; remote prune only cleans up dead branches list, it does not get new branches added to remote – Lina

Why does git remote update origin --prune have to be run manually? It should be clever enough to do this by itself if you have, for instance, checked out master from the server and there's no other branches (because they just got merged). – Pecan

was able to pull my upstream branches using git remote update upstream --prune – Mendive

I have to run this script to sync local with remote. git fetch -p && for branch in git branch -vv | grep ': gone]' | awk '{print $1}'; do git branch -D $branch; done – Exhilarative

If using with tortoise git then, have an option for Git Sync -> Pull (as Remote Update) – Firer

Bless you @centralcmd. it's very rare indeed that you search for a problem and find in the first try the exact solution you needed. – Enlighten

Answer 2

The OP did not ask for cleanup for all remotes, rather for all branches of default remote.

So git fetch --prune is what should be used.

Setting git config remote.origin.prune true makes --prune automatic. In that case just git fetch will also prune stale remote branches from the local copy. See also Automatic prune with Git fetch or pull.

Note that this does not clean local branches that are no longer tracking a remote branch. See How to prune local tracking branches that do not exist on remote anymore for that.

Lina

To make it a little shorter git fetch -p – Precious

Answer 3

I believe that if you run git branch --all from Bash that the list of remote and local branches you see will reflect what your local Git "knows" about at the time you run the command. Because your Git is always up to date with regard to the local branches in your system, the list of local branches will always be accurate.

However, for remote branches this need not be the case. Your local Git only knows about remote branches which it has seen in the last fetch (or pull). So it is possible that you might run git branch --all and not see a new remote branch which appeared after the last time you fetched or pulled.

To ensure that your local and remote branch list be up to date you can do a git fetch before running git branch --all.

For further information, the "remote" branches which appear when you run git branch --all are not really remote at all; they are actually local. For example, suppose there be a branch on the remote called feature which you have pulled at least once into your local Git. You will see origin/feature listed as a branch when you run git branch --all. But this branch is actually a local Git branch. When you do git fetch origin, this tracking branch gets updated with any new changes from the remote. This is why your local state can get stale, because there may be new remote branches, or your tracking branches can become stale.

Retort

Yep, git fetch did it. – Obvolute

git fetch doesn't work for me, need add --prune. Btw, I'm not downvoter ;) – Difficult

git fetch doesn't remove deleted remote branches. That's probably why some people downvoted – Tatum

tl'dr not true: git remote update origin --prune – Cockalorum

Answer 4

Use git fetch to fetch all latest created branches.

Indevout

git fetch did not change anything for me with git 2.17.1. Which version and options have you been using? – Opalopalesce

You need either --prune or git config remote.NAME.prune true for this to solve OP question – Lina

Answer 5

I use

git fetch --all --prune --tags --prune-tags --progress

and add this to my run commands file (.zshrc or .bashrc) so I can quickly type gitf to trigger this command:

alias gitf='git fetch --all --prune --tags --prune-tags --progress'

Calutron