Should I delete unused branches?

Question

I'm thinking about unused branched.

When I create new module I create new branch and name it with pattern "[task_id]-[shortDescription]" - for example: "4389-surveys". When I finish work on this branch I merge it to master and the branch lies unused.

Should I delete this branches or keep it for eventuality? Which practice is better and recommended?

I can't see the point of keeping unused development branches around. They just add mess to your repository. A number of existing branches won't slow down `git` noticeably but they take some space and make output of `git branch` hard to read. Anyway, if changes have been merged to a public branch they shouldn't be amended but a new commit should be added so it doesn't make sense to keep old changes. — Arkadiusz Drabczyk, Oct 28 '15 at 12:09
after merging it to master/main you can delete it. One reason that can be considered to keep it is if you like to keep track of the branch's history (e.g. who did what) — Kai, Oct 28 '15 at 12:10

score 3 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 17 '23 at 18:08

Credit @masonk https://stackoverflow.com/a/3392942/ :

Delete after merge is the usual way. This is why git branch -d checks to make sure that the branch is fully merged before it will delete.

There are a few reasons that I can think of to keep a branch around: you might want to hold onto it in case you have bugs coming back once it hits production, or you might want a historical record.

In either case, you have the option of tagging the head of the branch before you delete it. A tag is like a branch in that it is a pointer to a commit, except for a few minor differences:

porcelain usually doesn't display tags in exploratory commands like git show-branch or tab-auto complete in checkout

checking one out doesn't set HEAD (you will be in a detached HEAD)

you can leave a "tag" note on top of the note on the commit that it points at.

This way you preserve history, and if you ever do need to bug fix, I recommend just creating a new branch off of master for the fix.

Should I delete unused branches?

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