Is there a way to close a branch from the CLI?

I see how to list branches but not how to prune them.

fossil amend --close ?VERSION?

Thanks, I would never have thought of 'amend'.

Why doesn't 'branch' have an option to do this?

Indeed, 'fossil branch close' is a reasonable command to have, given the absense of delete.

As for the intended use, it appears that a branch would be closed automatically on 'merge --integrate'.

As for the intended use, it appears that a branch would be closed automatically on 'merge --integrate'.

Noting that it doesn't get closed until/unless the merge is committed. If the merge is canceled, so is the close.

The current two methods are sensible because "closing" a branch is applying a tag to a commit, so you must either do it during the initial commit as with merge --integrate or you must go back later and amend the last commit on that branch.

If there were a fossil branch close command, it would just be a thin wrapper over amend --close.

I think this is one of those cases where Fossil might seem more complicated than necessary but only because you haven't fully grokked all of the existing concepts. Adding the new mechanism would actually complicate things by adding a third way to do something we already have.

I suggest reading the branching doc, particularly the section on tags and properties.