Deleting a remote branch

Question

When I perform branch -a:

$ git branch -a
* master
 remotes/origin/HEAD -> origin/master
 remotes/origin/hello
 remotes/origin/master
         


        

Answer 1

To delete a remote branch, use

git push origin :remotebranch

Everything else operates on the local repository only. In more recent versions of git, you can also

git push origin --delete remotebranch

As per the documentation, --delete means the same "as prefixing all refs with a colon".

If you are wondering about meaning of the :, it follows the standard syntax for push. Usually, you would write

git push origin localbranch:remotebranch

but here, you replace localbranch with "nothing", effectively deleting the remote branch.