I found a useful Git one liner buried in leaked CIA developer docs • Hacker News Board

Re: I found a useful Git one liner buried in leaked CIA developer docs

#21

Post by arusahni » Fri, Feb 20, 2026, 2:39 PM UTC

I use this alias:

    prune-local = "!git fetch -p && for branch in $(git branch -vv | awk '/: gone]/{if ($1!=\"\*\") print $1}'); do git branch -d $branch; done"

1. Fetch the latest from my remote, removing any remote tracking branches that no longer exist

2. Enumerate local branches, selecting each that has been marked as no longer having a remote version (ignoring the current branch)

3. Delete the local branch safely

Re: I found a useful Git one liner buried in leaked CIA developer docs

#22

Post by jimmydoe » Fri, Feb 20, 2026, 2:40 PM UTC

parliament32 wrote: post #4

So effectively "I just discovered xargs"? Not to disparage OP but there isn't anything particularly novel here.

And they have to learn that from cia?

That says so much about the generation we are in, just don’t go to school but learn math from mafia

Re: I found a useful Git one liner buried in leaked CIA developer docs

#23

Post by elliotbnvl » Fri, Feb 20, 2026, 2:40 PM UTC

Trufa wrote: post #18

whazor wrote: post #2

I currently have a TUI addiction. Each time I want something to be easier, I open claude-code and ask for a TUI. Now I have a git worktree manager where I can add/rebase/delete. As TUI library I use Textual which claude handles quite well, especially as it can test-run quite some Python code.

The amount of little tools I'm creating for myself is incredible, 4.6 seems like it can properly one/two shot it now without my attention. Did you open source that one? I was thinking of this exact same thing but wanted to think a little about how to share deps, i.e. if I do quick worktree to try a branch I don't wanna npm i that takes forever. Also, if you share it with me, there's obviously no expectations, even it…

The deps question is huge, let me know if you solve it.

Re: I found a useful Git one liner buried in leaked CIA developer docs

#24

Post by gritzko » Fri, Feb 20, 2026, 2:40 PM UTC

Speaking of user friendliness of git UI. I am working on a revision control system that (ideally) should be as user friendly as Ctrl+S Ctrl+Z in most common cases. Spent almost a week on design docs, looking for feedback (so far it was very valuable, btw)

https://replicated.wiki/blog/partII.html#navigating-the-hist...

Re: I found a useful Git one liner buried in leaked CIA developer docs

#25

Post by ses1984 » Fri, Feb 20, 2026, 2:41 PM UTC

firesteelrain wrote: post #19

whazor wrote: post #2

I currently have a TUI addiction. Each time I want something to be easier, I open claude-code and ask for a TUI. Now I have a git worktree manager where I can add/rebase/delete. As TUI library I use Textual which claude handles quite well, especially as it can test-run quite some Python code.

Can you explain TUI? I have never heard this before

Terminal UI.

Re: I found a useful Git one liner buried in leaked CIA developer docs

#26

Post by jo-m » Fri, Feb 20, 2026, 2:43 PM UTC

I have something similar, but open fzf to select the branches to delete [1].

    function fcleanb -d "fzf git select branches to delete where the upstream has disappeared"
        set -l branches_to_delete (
            git for-each-ref --sort=committerdate --format='%(refname:lstrip=2) %(upstream:track)' refs/heads/ | \
            egrep '\[gone\]$' | grep -v "master" | \
            awk '{print $1}' | $_FZF_BINARY --multi --exit-0 \
        )

        for branch in $branches_to_delete
            git branch -D "$branch"
        end
    end

[1]: https://github.com/jo-m/dotfiles/blob/29d4cab4ba6a18dc44dcf9...

Re: I found a useful Git one liner buried in leaked CIA developer docs

#27

Post by lloeki » Fri, Feb 20, 2026, 2:45 PM UTC

I've had essentially that - if a bit fancier to accept an optional argument as well as handle common "mainline" branch names - aliased as `git lint` for a while:

    [alias]
        lint = !git branch --merged ${1-} | grep -v -E -e '^[*]?[ ]*(main|master|[0-9]+[.]([0-9]+|x)-stable)$' -e '^[*][ ]+' | xargs -r -n 1 git branch --delete

so:

    git pull --prune && git lint

sits very high in my history stats

Re: I found a useful Git one liner buried in leaked CIA developer docs

#28

Post by hattmall » Fri, Feb 20, 2026, 2:46 PM UTC

whazor wrote: post #2

I currently have a TUI addiction. Each time I want something to be easier, I open claude-code and ask for a TUI. Now I have a git worktree manager where I can add/rebase/delete. As TUI library I use Textual which claude handles quite well, especially as it can test-run quite some Python code.

What are some examples of useful TUI you made? I'm generally opposed to the concept

Re: I found a useful Git one liner buried in leaked CIA developer docs

#29

Post by Bjartr » Fri, Feb 20, 2026, 2:47 PM UTC

firesteelrain wrote: post #19

whazor wrote: post #2

I currently have a TUI addiction. Each time I want something to be easier, I open claude-code and ask for a TUI. Now I have a git worktree manager where I can add/rebase/delete. As TUI library I use Textual which claude handles quite well, especially as it can test-run quite some Python code.

Can you explain TUI? I have never heard this before

Terminal User Interface, contrasting with a Graphical User Interface (GUI). Most often applied to programs that use the terminal as a pseudo-graphical canvas that they draw on with characters to provide an interactive page that can be navigated around with the keyboard.

Really, they're just a GUI drawn with Unicode instead of drawing primitives.

Like many restrictions, limiting oneself to just a fixed grid of colored Unicode characters for drawing lends itself to more creative solutions to problems. Some people prefer such UIs, some people don't.

Re: I found a useful Git one liner buried in leaked CIA developer docs

#30

Post by jakub_g » Fri, Feb 20, 2026, 2:48 PM UTC

The main issue with `git branch --merged` is that if the repo enforces squash merges, it obviously won't work, because SHA of squash-merged commit in main != SHA of the original branch HEAD.

What tools are the best to do the equivalent but for squash-merged branches detections?

Note: this problem is harder than it seems to do safely, because e.g. I can have a branch `foo` locally that was squash-merged on remote, but before it happened, I might have added a few more commits locally and forgot to push. So naively deleting `foo` locally may make me lose data.