When attempting to delete a branch I get the following
I am sure that must be me doing something wrong, as cleaning up already merged branches must surely be possible?
Hi, I’m afraid that deleting branches is not possible in Plastic SCM. Please check the following blog post for further details: Plastic SCM blog: Why we don't delete branches in Plastic?
Ok, I am sorry but that is insane.
The argument that thousands of branches is not a problem for Plastic SCM totally misses the point, since the issue is that we, as developers, have to deal with all these branches cluttering the view.
As a minimum there should be a way to hide branches.
We are working on a feature for 2024 where you will be able to hide branches or easily customize the branch explorer based on your needs (while the branches still exist on the repo).
I would add that the entire blog post is also a bit arrogant; someone decided what is best for me and my team.
If I were in Unity I would communicate it with more sensibility.
I think it’s only the blog post’s Conclusion that comes off like that, and at least take note of the post date; 2018 pre-dates acquisition by Unity.
That said, I second the request to hide branches. I completely understand the need to keep changesets.
I wonder why Unity added a branch deletion dialog even they know the branches can’t be deleted?
You should be able to delete branches if they don’t have any changeset.
The archiving of a branch of view can’t come fast enough! 
Being unable to remove branches easily certainly is detrimental to multi feature work.
If we use a branch per feature and work on 8 features a month, after a year that is 96 branches we can’t remove. It’s slowly but surely turning into a swampy mess.
Additionally having the last changed date would be extremely useful.
The ability to arrange the branch view based on last updated would be a time saver, it brings the most important ones together in a clump rather than keeping them spread out.
Branch explorer has its uses, but its sometimes a puzzle you need to observe and is not the quickest method for locating something.
Unfortunately sometimes people do not name things as you would expect… so it’s not always an exact science finding a branch when it’s jammed between other names.
Until that comes, a query such as find branches where changesets > '3 days ago' or name = 'main' can be used to at least filter a bit.
We recently added some new filters and improved features in the branch explorer:
We are also working on a “soft delete / hide” branch option for the branch explorer. It should be available very soon.
This would be awesome!
Hi! Any news about this feature of “hiding” branches option?
It should be available in the following weeks