I work from two different computers (A and B) and store a common git remote in the dropbox directory.
Let's say I have two branches, master and devel. Both are tracking their remote counterparts origin/master and origin/devel.
Now while on computer A, I delete branch devel, on local and remote.
git push origin :heads/devel
git branch -d devel
Running git branch -a on computer A, I get the following list of branches.
Running git fetch on computer B, I can remove the local devel branch with git branch -d devel, but I can't remove the remote devel branch.
git push origin :heads/devel returns the following error messages.
error: unable to push to unqualified destination: heads/proxy3d
The destination refspec neither matches an existing ref on the remote nor begins with refs/, and we are unable to guess a prefix based on the source ref.
fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly
git branch -a still lists origin/devel in the remote branches.
How can I clean up the remote branches from computer B?
First, what is the result of git branch -a on machine B?
Second, you have already deleted heads/devel on origin, so that's why you can't delete it from machine B.
Try
git branch -r -d origin/devel
or
git remote prune origin
or
git fetch origin --prune
and feel free to add --dry-run to the end of your git statement to see the result of running it without actually running it.
Docs for git remote prune and git branch.