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Delete a branch

After a branch has served its purpose — whether it's been merged, abandoned, or superseded — it can be deleted. Deleting a branch that has not been merged will permanently discard all changes accumulated on it.

Ways to delete a branch​

Branches can be deleted in two ways:

  • Manually via the branch detail view or any Infrahub interface (CLI, GraphQL).
  • Automatically after merge when delete_branch_after_merge is enabled in the configuration.

You cannot delete a branch while it is being merged; wait for the merge to finish. A branch whose merge failed (MERGE_FAILED) cannot be deleted until an administrator recovers the merge; see Recovering the failed merge.

Automatic branch cleanup after merge​

Infrahub can automatically delete a branch after it is successfully merged, keeping your branch list tidy without manual cleanup.

The branch is deleted immediately after a successful merge, whether initiated through a direct branch merge or a Proposed Change. This behavior is opt-in: set delete_branch_after_merge = true (or INFRAHUB_DELETE_BRANCH_AFTER_MERGE=true) to enable it.

To also remove the linked Git branch, set delete_git_branch_after_merge = true (INFRAHUB_GIT_DELETE_GIT_BRANCH_AFTER_MERGE=true). This has no effect unless Infrahub branch deletion is also enabled. While the merge waits to be pushed to the remote, Infrahub keeps the Git branch and deletes it after the push, as described in the source branch is kept until its merge is pushed.

What happens after deletion​

Once deleted, a branch no longer exists and cannot be interacted with.

If the branch was linked to a Git repository, the deletion is propagated to Git. If the remote deletion fails, a log entry is available under the repository view in Infrahub.

Deleting a branch can also release branch-agnostic values that the branch was the last to read — including resource pool allocations, which return to the pool. See Branch-agnostic data.