I've been using git for a few years now, so I'd say I'm "comfortable" with it but am by no means an expert.
Started a new job and my dev lead is trying to tell me that if I don't periodically delete/prune my local feature branches using git remote update origin --prune that git will auto-push them occassionally when pushing OTHER feature branches!!!
As an example of what he's saying here, let's say I've got a project called myproject which has the following branches:
masterdevelopfeature/onefeature/twofeature/threeLet's say feature/one and feature/two are old and have already been pushed to GitHub, merged to develop, and deleted from GitHub (the origin). feature/three is what I'm currently working on.
He's saying that if I don't git remote update origin --prune periodically, that I run the risk of re-pushing feature/one and feature/two to GitHub when I go to finally push my feature/three branch via git push!
This statement, if true, would not only shock me, it would leave me thunderstruck! Is it true, false, or partially correct, and why?!
Since Git 2.0 the default push.default config is set to simple. Only the current branch is pushed if it is connected with a remote tracking branch and the names are matching: https://git-scm.com/docs/git-config.
Before, in Git 1.x., the default was matching. With this configuration all local branches with a equal named remote tracking branch were pushed together. If you had stale remote tracking branches, it could happen, that a git push re-created a removed remote branch.
Maybe your dev lead is still on Git 1.x. or your team decided to use the old matching behavior as default.