如何在 Github 存储库上将主分支重命名为 master

Question

I'd like to create a github repository and rename the main branch to master .

If I create a new repository on github and do

git init
git add README.md
git commit -m "first commit"
git branch -M master

I get

error: refname refs/heads/master not found
fatal: Branch rename failed

so I seem to somehow not understand git well enough. What's the issue here?

---

I must have gotten confused when I was playing around with the above. The following happens:

git init create the repository

git add README.md adds the file

git commit -m "first commit" adds the file to the master branch since that still default for git

so I never have to rename it in the first place. Now Github uses the default main, which can be changed in settings -> repositories on github.com

Answer 1

I'd like to create a github repository and rename the main branch to master .

If I create a new repository on github and do

git init
git add README.md
git commit -m "first commit"
git branch -M master

I get

error: refname refs/heads/master not found
fatal: Branch rename failed

so I seem to somehow not understand git well enough. What's the issue here?

---

I must have gotten confused when I was playing around with the above. The following happens:

git init create the repository

git add README.md adds the file

git commit -m "first commit" adds the file to the master branch since that still default for git

so I never have to rename it in the first place. Now Github uses the default main, which can be changed in settings -> repositories on github.com

Answer 2

Using the -m option (move/rename) instead of -M with the name of the branch you're renaming from, here main, will work. Then you can push your renamed branch and maintain your reflog as well.

git branch -m main master
git push -u origin master

I also wrote a blog post with more details which can in case the repo was cloned by someone else before renaming the branch. You can check it out here.

Answer 3

I'm not able to vote up yet ("Thanks for the feedback! You need at least 15 reputation to cast a vote, but your feedback has been recorded."). I just want to call out CodingNagger's reply as working great for me, thank you!