how to close a branch in git

git git-branch git-tag git-archive
Matthieu picture Matthieu · Mar 2, 2016 · Viewed 70.7k times · Source

When I know I won't use a branch any more is it possible to close or lock it? Actually I would like to close a branch but I don't think it is possible to close a branch with GIT. what about the delete. What happens to my history when I delete a branch?

Answer

Farhad Faghihi picture Farhad Faghihi · Mar 2, 2016

Updated Answer

As @user3159253 stated in comments of this answer :

git garbage-collects commits which aren't referenced, directly or indirectly, by a named reference (branch, tag, etc). That is why it is important to leave a reference to a freezed branch.

You can tag the tip of the branch by archiving it, and then delete the branch.

git tag archive/<branchname> <branchname>
git branch -d <branchname>
git checkout master

The branch will be deleted, and can be retrieved later by checking out the tag, and recreating the branch.

git checkout archive/<branchname>
git checkout -b new_branch_name

Or more simply :

git checkout -b new_branch_name archive/<branchname>

Related questions

How to create a new branch from a tag?

I'd like to create a new master branch from an existing tag. Say I have a tag v1.0. How to create a new branch from this tag?

Read More
How is a tag different from a branch in Git? Which should I use, here?

I am having some difficulty understanding how to use tags versus branches in git. I just moved the current version of our code from cvs to git, and now I'm going to be working on a subset of that code …

Read More
Add new commit to the existing Git tag

I have created a Git tag as v1.1 using git tag -a v1.1 -m 'my version 1.1' and I pushed that tag. Later, I made some changes related to v1.1. Now when I push new changes and check the git …

Read More