How to make my Master branch my Head, and create a new master

Question

We started a new project, a couple of months ago. We made a master branch, but actually used this as a develop/head branch. So this is full of commits you wouldn't want in your master. We actually have no head branch.

What I want, is to create a head branch, this should have all the commits of the current master branch, and then create a new master branch. I see some other examples of partly similar questions, but don't want to just try things and mess stuff up.

Answer 1

Just pull the newest changes from the current master branch by git pull . Now you are on the Head . Then you must renaming the current master -branch to develop -branch (because there must not be branches with the same name) with git branch -m develop (but you must checkout the branch, where you want to rename). Then you must push the new / renamed branch to remote with git push origin -u develop and remove the old one: git push origin --delete master .

Now you can create the new one with clean commit-history with simple git checkout --orphan -b master and push it to remote with git push -u origin master . (about -orphan flag, read the documentation ).

And now you can git merge from develop -branch to master -branch if you need it without having every single commit in the master -branch.