Question

Do any of you git gurus have a script that will help with folks new to git manage their local and remote-tracking branches. Proponents of distributed version control may scoff at this idea, but I believe it will help ramp people up on git.

I’m looking for a script that will:

• Create a local branch for every new remote branch (with the same name)
• Prune remote-tracking branches for remote branches that no longer exist
• Delete local branches for those pruned remote branches (ask user for confirmation if local branch was ahead of remote)

We use a central git repo that all developers push/pull from/to. So, we want git to function more like SVN (but with better merging capabilities).

Bonus if you can get this to work with Git Extensions from the GUI.

Answer 1

Implemented as a Git Extensions plugin. https://github.com/gitextensions/gitextensions/pull/1451

This plugin allows users familiar with SVN to ramp up on Git faster. This plugin will:

• fetch changes from a remote
• create local branches for all remote branches not currently tracked
• delete local branches tied to pruned remote branches
• reset local branches to match remote branches
• not affect local-only branches

A confirmation is displayed for any change to the user’s working directory.