Can git permanently ignore a remote branch?

Question

I\'m using the Pages feature of GitHub. This works by putting the published HTML in a branch called gh-pages. I have two separate working directories, one for t

Answer 1

Since git 2.29, released in october 2020, you can leverage negative refspec to exclude a specific branch to be fetched.

For GitHub Pages, you can do it like so:

git config --add remote.origin.fetch ^refs/heads/gh-pages

You can read more about it on https://github.blog/2020-10-19-git-2-29-released/#user-content-negative-refspecs

Answer 2

You can modify the .gitconfig, so it tells git to fetch only what you just want:

   fetch = +refs/heads/mybranch:refs/remotes/origin/mybranch

Also, you can create an alias for the fetch which fetches what you want:

 git fetch origin +refs/heads/mybranch:refs/remotes/origin/mybranch

The creation of an alias is as simple as adding the new alias in .gitconfig:

 [alias]
   myfetch= git fetch origin +refs/heads/mybranch:refs/remotes/origin/mybranch

UPDATE:

You can specify more branches of course:

 git fetch origin +refs/heads/master:refs/remotes/origin/master +refs/heads/develop:refs/remotes/origin/develop

Answer 3

I just hit the same problem. I was interested in one branch from 'bob', but he had many branches cluttering up my git branch -a output.

I did this:

rm .git/refs/remotes/bob/{next,master,maint}

and the branches were gone. A git fetch might restore them though, but I don't intend to fetch from bob regularly.