Re: Caution when removing git branches

On Wed, Jan 26, 2011 at 11:26 AM, Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> wrote:
> For those of you using git, I wanted to point out that it is fairly easy
> to remove git branches.  For example, I can easily remove a branch on
> my github repository using:
>
>        $ git branch -d :branch_name
>
> I don't believe that is revertable.  What is scarey is that this could
> be done on our 'origin' as well.

The colon in that syntax is flat wrong. But branch deletes won't
automatically propagate between repositories. I do things like this
all the time:

git branch -d REL8_4_STABLE

Doesn't delete it from the master at all, and I can recreate it
whenever I like using:

git checkout REL8_4_STABLE

In fact, even I do this, it's harmless:

git branch -r -D origin/REL8_4_STABLE

Because it'll be undone the next time I do this:

git pull

Now, there IS an incantation to destroy a branch from the upstream
repository (using git push with an argument) but even if that
happened, it wouldn't propagate to cloned copies, so someone else
could easily put it back.

--
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company