title: Clean large pack-refs after many branches where "archived"
body: <p>I recently &quot;archived&quot; (created <code>archive/tag</code> and removed branch - following <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1307114/how-can-i-archive-git-branches">How can I archive git branches?</a>) a large set of branches.</p>
  <p>However, this did not solved one of my issues, which was the large number of lines I had to scroll through in <a href="/questions/tagged/tortoisegit" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;tortoisegit&#39;" rel="tag">tortoisegit</a> when performing some action (here: merge: <a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/8m8AV.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/8m8AV.png" alt="tortoisegit lots of refs" /></a>.</p>
  <p>I see all these branches in Tortoise, even if they do not show locally or remotely with the <code>git branch -a</code> command:</p>
  <h2>Question</h2>
  <p>How is it possible to reset this set of references without having to clone the entire repo.?</p>