The Atlassian Community Forums are currently in read-only mode. We will be relaunching on a new platform on September 22 (read more here). We apologize for the extended downtime. For concerns or questions, please email communitymanagers@atlassian.com. See you on the other side, on the new Atlassian Community Forums! :)

×
Forums
Home Q&A Discussion groups Articles Ask a question Search
Learning
Events
Champions
Release Notes
Community
Forums
Home Q&A Discussion groups Articles Ask a question Search
Learning Events Champions Release Notes
Forums
Home Q&A Discussion groups Articles Ask a question Search
Learning Events Champions Release Notes

Forums

Articles
Create
cancel
Turn on suggestions
Auto-suggest helps you quickly narrow down your search results by suggesting possible matches as you type.
Showing results forĀ 
Search instead forĀ 
Did you mean:Ā 
Q&A
See all
Community resources
Top groups
Explore all groups
Community resources
Learn
Community resources
Events
Community resources

What happens to the Git branch when a pull request is declined?

Harrison McCullough
Harrison McCullough
I'm New Here
I'm New Here
Those new to the Atlassian Community have posted less than three times. Give them a warm welcome!
Get involved
October 16, 2020

What happens to the associated Git branch when a pull request is declined? I believe the documentation says that nothing happens to the underlying repository.

What happens if the branch is later deleted? Will the pull request still "hold on" to the code that was supposed to be merged? Or will Git eventually garbage collect them if no branches/tags reference the changed code?

In case it's helpful, I'm wondering what will happen if these steps happen:

  1. Branch is created
  2. Commits are added to the branch
  3. Pull request is created based on the branch
  4. Pull request is declined
  5. The branch is deleted on the server
Watch
Like Behzad Morshedzadeh likes this
6896 views

1 answer

1 accepted

Comments for this post are closed

Community moderators have prevented the ability to post new answers.

1 vote
Answer accepted
Mikael Sandberg
Mikael Sandberg
Community Champion
October 16, 2020

If you delete a branch that have not been merged, as in the scenario of a pull request being declined, your commits would also be lost. So the only thing the pull request would hold on to would be the commits, but since those have been deleted you would not be able to reopen or view the code changes. This is why Bitbucket gives you a warning when deleting a branch with commits that you will lose those changes too.

View More Comments
Harrison McCullough
Harrison McCullough
I'm New Here
I'm New Here
Those new to the Atlassian Community have posted less than three times. Give them a warm welcome!
Get involved
October 16, 2020

That's what I assumed. Thank you for confirming!

Like ā€¢ Mikael Sandberg likes this
Reply
Bitbucket
Bitbucket
TAGS
AUG Leaders

Atlassian Community Events

    See all events
    Community
    Forums
    FAQs Forums guidelines
    Learning
    About learning Resources
    Events
    Champions
    Release Notes
    Copyright © 2026 Atlassian
    Privacy Policy Notice at Collection Terms Security