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Motivation

A tribute to git-sweep

gitsweeper is a tribute to a tool that's been part of my workflow for years: git-sweep by arc90. git-sweep is a great little Python utility — point it at a repo, and it tells you which remote branches have already been merged so you can clean them up.

Unfortunately, git-sweep has been effectively abandoned:

Why a Go rewrite

I've been learning Go and wanted a project I'd actually use. Go fits this problem well:

  • Self-contained binaries. A 7.8 MB binary works on any Linux/macOS/Windows box without worrying about Python versions, virtualenvs, or system packages.
  • First-class CLI ergonomics. The flag package in the standard library is enough for a small utility like this.
  • A mature git library. go-git handles read operations (branch listing, commit traversal) entirely in-process — no shelling out for the read path.

The output is intentionally close to the original git-sweep so muscle memory transfers:

$ git-sweep preview
Fetching from the remote
These branches have been merged into master:

  merged_already_to_master

To delete them, run again with `git-sweep cleanup`

$ gitsweeper preview
Fetching from the remote...

These branches have been merged into master:
  origin/merged_already_to_master

To delete them, run again with `gitsweeper cleanup`

What's new vs. git-sweep

A few changes were made along the way, all motivated by real-world pain:

  • Squash-merge detection. The biggest one. git-sweep (and gitsweeper's earliest versions) only detected branches whose tip commit appeared in the main branch — that misses every branch merged via GitHub's Squash and merge button. See Squash-Merge Detection.
  • Forge-independent. gitsweeper uses only vanilla git commands. No GitHub/GitLab API tokens needed, no rate limits to worry about, works on self-hosted git just as well as GitHub.
  • Cross-platform binaries. Pre-built binaries for Linux (amd64/arm64), macOS (Intel/Apple Silicon), and Windows.
  • Configurable history depth. --max-commits lets you tune how far back to scan; the default of 10 000 covers most projects.
  • Skip lists. Comma-separated --skip excludes specific branches you don't want considered.

What this tool is not

  • A replacement for git branch -D. gitsweeper only deletes remote branches via git push --delete. Your local branches are untouched.
  • A history rewriter. gitsweeper never touches the main branch or rewrites commits. It only deletes refs.
  • A reviewer. gitsweeper tells you which branches look merged. It cannot tell you whether your colleague had uncommitted experimental work on a branch they squash-merged. Use --force carefully.

If you've used git-sweep for years and just want the same workflow with squash-merge support and a single binary — that's what gitsweeper is.