Sam Vilain <sam@xxxxxxxxxx> writes: > It doesn't do that because the head doesn't match any revision that was > given to us by `rev-list refs/remotes/foo/*` Gaah. That goes all the way down to the root commit. + print "fetching revs for ".@refs." remote refs\n"; Is this meant to be final message to the end-user, or debug? + my %r = map { ($_ => undef) } + $git->command("rev-list", @refs); This traverses all the way down to the root commit, doesn't it? That is probably good enough for a toy repository for testing, but is impractical in real repositories, I am afraid. See below for the standard ways to check ancestry. + # don't delete the current branch + my ($checked_out) = $git->command(qw(symbolic-ref HEAD)); When the HEAD is detached, does the error message go directly to the end user? + while ( my ($ref, $rev) = each %l ) { + next if $checked_out and $ref eq $checked_out; + if ( exists $r{$rev} ) { + print "$ref is obsolete\n"; + $git->command(qw(update-ref -d), $ref, $rev); + } + } The standard way to check if commit A is included in (i.e. is an ancestor of) commit B, without traversing the ancestry chain of B all the way down to the root commit, is to run: git merge-base --all A B and see if A appears in its output (if so, then A is an ancestor of B, otherwise it is not). This is a pair-wise check, and for your purpose the check would become N*M operation (Yuck). The same check can be done in parallel with: git show-branch --independent A B C D... whose output would include A if the commit is not included in any of the other commits B C D... This parallel traversal has a limit --- you can only check 25 branches at a time. >> If the above is the usage scenario you are trying to help, then >> wouldn't it be helpful if you could also help removing 'my-next' >> in this slightly altered example? >> >> $ git clone >> ... time passes ... >> $ git checkout -b my-next origin/next >> ... build, install, have fun ... >> $ git checkout master >> ... time passes ... >> $ git branch >> ... notice that you do not hack on your copy of 'next' >> ... which is 'my-next', and want to remove it >> $ git remote prune -c > > Yes, the idea was to "sweep" all branches that were just local branches > of a remote and never worked on. This is most useful right now for > people switching from Cogito or old-style remotes, who have a lot of > branches that are remote tracking branches. Using this, they can just > set up a new remote, fetch and prune -c and be left in a tidy state. You make it sound like this is just a one-shot conversion issue, in which case I really doubt we would want that. But it appears to be a useful feature in general, provided if the assumed use case is described clearly so that new users know when to use it. In the form that was given to me, I think the documentation leaves the user in a "Huh?" state. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html