nuke - Git Productivity Toolkit

gx nuke deletes branches thoroughly: local branch, remote tracking ref, and remote branch in one operation. It supports glob patterns for batch deletion and has safety guards to prevent accidents.

Usage

gx nuke <branch-or-pattern> [flags]
gx nuke --orphans [flags]

Arguments

Argument	Description
`branch-or-pattern`	Branch name or glob pattern (e.g., `feature/*`)

Flags

Flag	Short	Description
`--local`		Only delete the local branch (skip remote)
`--dry-run`		Show what would be deleted without making changes
`--yes`	`-y`	Skip confirmation prompts
`--orphans`		Delete all orphaned branches from the stack

Examples

$ gx nuke feature/old-auth

  feature/old-auth is NOT merged into main.

Proceed with deletion? [y/N] y
OK Deleted local branch feature/old-auth
OK Deleted remote tracking ref origin/feature/old-auth
OK Deleted remote branch origin/feature/old-auth

$ gx nuke "feature/experiment-*" --dry-run

DRY RUN. No changes will be made

  feature/experiment-1  Local: true  Remote: true  Merged: false
  feature/experiment-2  Local: true  Remote: false Merged: true

  Would delete: 2 branches

$ gx nuke --orphans

Orphaned branches:
  old-experiment
  temp-fix

Delete 2 orphaned branches? [y/N] y
OK Deleted old-experiment
OK Deleted temp-fix

$ gx nuke feature/done --local

Safety Guards

gx nuke includes several safety measures:

Guard	Behavior
Current branch	Cannot nuke the branch you are on. gx prints `ERROR Cannot nuke '<branch>': it's the current branch. Switch first.`
HEAD branch	Cannot nuke main/master. gx prints `ERROR Cannot nuke '<branch>': it's the HEAD branch. Blocked for safety.`
Unmerged warning	Branches not merged into the HEAD branch are flagged with a prominent warning
Stack children	If the branch has dependent branches in the stack, gx warns they will become orphaned
Confirmation	Always asks for confirmation (unless `--yes`), and always asks when unmerged branches are involved even with `--yes`

Deleting a branch that has children in the stack will orphan those children. They will appear in gx graph with the ! orphaned indicator. Use gx nuke --orphans later to clean them up, or use gx retarget to reparent them first.

Merged vs Unmerged

Merged branches are deleted with git branch -d (safe delete)
Unmerged branches are deleted with git branch -D (force delete)

The merge status is checked against the HEAD branch using git branch --merged.

Orphan Mode

gx nuke --orphans finds all branches in the stack config whose parent no longer exists and offers to delete them in batch. This is useful after merging and deleting parent branches.

Details

Glob patterns are resolved against all local branches
Remote deletion uses git push origin --delete <branch>
Remote tracking refs are cleaned up with git branch -dr origin/<branch>
After deletion, the branch is removed from the stack config
When a branch is removed from the config, its children are also removed (they become orphaned)

​Usage

​Arguments

​Flags

​Examples

​Safety Guards

​Merged vs Unmerged

​Orphan Mode

Usage

Arguments

Flags

Examples

Safety Guards

Merged vs Unmerged

Orphan Mode