Git & GitHub Interview Question #145

What should you do before deleting a local or remote branch?

Security, Team Workflows, Troubleshooting & Senior Git/GitHub Scenarios Senior Advanced

Quick Interview Answer

Confirm that the branch's required work has been merged, rebased, cherry-picked, tagged, or otherwise preserved. Check the branch commits relative to the target branch and verify that no active pull request or deployment still depends on it.

Detailed Explanation

For remote deletion, consider other collaborators who may still be using the branch. A branch name can be deleted while its commits remain reachable elsewhere, but unmerged unique commits may eventually become difficult to recover.

Code Example

git fetch --all --prune

# Show commits unique to the branch
git log main..feature/old-work --oneline

# Safe local deletion if merged
git branch -d feature/old-work