Changing existing branches
As we prepare for GitHub to completely switch over to main as the default branch, I have been doing some cleanup on projects I have not yet pushed. GitHub is working on a tool to transfer over already pushed repos by the end of the year. That tool will “seamlessly” transfer open PRs, draft PRs and branch protection policies. I’m impatient and want to get into the habit of switching to the new naming scheme now, so here is a braindump of things I have done so far.
git branch -m master main
-mkeeps history so everything moves over to this new branch! You’ll be able togit reflogandgit blamewith no issues just like before.
git push -u origin main
Push and change the tracking branch over to
main.
Fix up local clones
https://twitter.com/xunit/status/1269881005877256192
$ git checkout master
$ git branch -m master main
$ git fetch
$ git branch --unset-upstream
$ git branch -u origin/main
$ git symbolic-ref refs/remotes/origin/HEAD refs/remotes/origin/main ___
Preparing for the future
As of git 2.28 there’s a new config option to set the default branch. How nice of them!
git config --global init.defaultBranch main
This config will tell git init to default to main as the naming scheme, but you can change that to trunk or latest if you prefer SVN esque naming schemes.
I run an Ubuntu derivative and my apt was on git 2.17.X so I just went ahead and ran
add-apt-repository ppa:git-core/ppa
and then
sudo apt update and sudo apt upgrade to install the newest version of git.