Git One-Liner for Deleting Merged Branches, Found in CIA's Vault7 Leak
By
spencerldixon
A second-rack bagel that's nearly first-rack. Tasty stuff.
Summary
The article describes a useful git one-liner command for cleaning up merged branches that was discovered in the CIA's leaked Vault7 documents from 2017. While most of the CIA's developer documentation contained standard git tips, this particular command for deleting all locally merged branches has remained valuable to the author, who has kept it in their shell configuration file for years.
Key quotes
· 4 pulledIn 2017, WikiLeaks published Vault7 - a large cache of CIA hacking tools and internal documents. Buried among the exploits and surveillance tools was something far more mundane: a page of internal developer documentation with git tips and tricks.
But one tip has lived in my ~/.zshrc ever since.
Over time, a local git repo accumulates stale branches. Every feature branch, hotfix, and experiment you've ever merged sits there doing nothing. git branch starts to look like a graveyard.
How to delete all merged git branches locally with a single command. This one-liner has been in my zshrc since 2017 — I found it buried in the CIA's Vault7 leak...
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