Delete Head Branch (Deprecated)

The delete_head_branch action allows Mergify to automatically delete the head branch of a pull request once that pull request is closed, whether it was merged or not. This can be useful for maintaining a clean repository and reducing clutter from unused branches. Add a merged condition to your rule if you only want merged pull requests to have their branch deleted.

A head branch that lives on a fork is never deleted.

Mergify does nothing on a pull request coming from a fork, since the head branch is not yours to delete. Unless force is set, it also refuses to delete a branch that other pull requests still use, and GitHub refuses to delete a protected branch or the repository’s default branch.

The author of a pull request picks its head branch, so a rule whose conditions describe only the state of a pull request deletes whichever branch that person named as the head. That leaves long-lived unprotected branches exposed, such as a staging or a release branch. A condition on the author or on a label, or a pattern on head, keeps the rule off them.

Here is an example of how the delete_head_branch action can be used in your workflow:

pull_request_rules:
  - name: delete head branch after merge if the label "cleanup" is present
    conditions:
      - merged
      - label = cleanup
    actions:
      delete_head_branch:

In this example, Mergify will automatically delete the head branch of a pull request once it has been merged, but only if the pull request has been labeled with “cleanup”.