What is the "obsolete" git branch?

Question

A "Stale" git branch is a term that I've heard a lot. I know this has something to do with branches that are considered less useful or useless, but cannot find an exact definition. What is the "obsolete" git branch?

Answer 1

The oldest link to "obsolete" was found in the e194cd1 commit (January 2007, Git 1.5.0), which detected " obsolete tracking branches on a remote computer ": when tracking a branch deleted by a remote system.
Hence the git remote prune .

This is the main definition of an obsolete branch: a remote tracking branch that doesn't track anything (because the actual branch in the remote repo has disappeared)

git remote show can list them.

---

By the way, you have two other definitions of "deprecated" on a Git system:

• Another link to "obsolete" includes a git reflog --stale-fix in commit 1389d9d (Git 1.5.0) to track the " broken commit ": a commit that is not accessible from any of the links, and there is a commit among the missing object, a tree or blob objects accessible from it that are not accessible from any of the links.
  This helps to correct the situation after starting git prune not supporting reflog, from the old git in the presence of reflogs.

• The 740fdd2 commit (March 2008, Git 1.5.5) also introduces "obsolete" for symbolic links when the link they point to no longer exists.

---

As @SteelToe mentioned: defining an obsolete branch, according to the GitHub documentation , is a branch that has not had any commits in the previous 3 months.
Usually this indicates an old / unsupported / not current branch.

Answer 2

Defining an obsolete branch, according to the GitHub documentation, is a branch that had no commit in the previous 3 months.

This usually indicates an old / not having / not current branch.

For more information see https://help.github.com/articles/viewing-branches-in-your-repository/

Answer 3

This is because there is no “exact definition." "Stale git branch", "obsolete data", "obsolete configuration options" - none of them have an exact definition, but they all relate to things that are considered old / unsupported / not current / possible.

Thus, an “obsolete git branch” is usually a repository branch that has not been affected for a long time. Maybe it broke, maybe not; this, of course, is not the current w / r / t value for the active development branch, and no one has been looking at it for some time.