daiji256/delete-orphan-branch

During a GitHub Actions workflow, this action deletes remote orphan branches that match user-specified criteria.

Companion actions are available: upload at daiji256/upload-to-orphan-branch and download at daiji256/download-from-orphan-branch. End-to-end usage examples are provided in orphan-branch-upload-download-delete-examples.

Why delete orphan branches

If you keep saving workflow outputs in new orphan branches, the branch list grows, clutters the repository, and slowly increases its size. Deleting old branches prevents that.

How it works

1. Fetch remote branches.
2. Skip HEAD.
3. For each branch matching branch-regex, ensure it has one commit, expected committer/message, and is old enough.
4. Delete the branches that pass all checks.

Inputs

Input	Default	Description
branch-regex	-	Regex to match branch names eligible for deletion.
expected-committer-name	github-actions[bot]	Delete only branches whose committer name exactly matches this.
expected-committer-email	41898282+github-actions[bot]@users.noreply.github.com	Delete only branches whose committer email exactly matches this.
expected-commit-message	-	Delete only branches whose commit message exactly matches this. Omit to ignore message filtering.
older-than-seconds	0	Delete branches only if they are older than this many seconds. Set 0 to delete all matched branches.
if-branch-not-found	ignore	ignore: continue without failing; error: fail action.

Notes

• Requires workflow permission: contents: write.
• Choose a precise branch-regex to avoid deleting unintended branches.

Example

jobs:
  delete:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    permissions:
      contents: write

    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v5
        with:
          fetch-depth: 0

      - uses: daiji256/delete-orphan-branch@v1
        with:
          branch-regex: orphan-output-.*
          older-than-seconds: 604800 # 7 days

License

MIT © Daiji256