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

Note that git branch only allows for deleting local references.

 git branch -r -D origin/hello

That only delete the local pointer to a remote tracking branch, but that has no influence on the remote repo content itself.
Only the git push origin :hello, as mentioned in the other answers, would do that.

Plus, that doesn't change the config branch.hello.fetch: it still references origin/hello, which is why the next fetch will re-create the remote tracking branch in your local repo.