Make the current Git branch a master branch

Question

I have a repository in Git  I made a branch  then did some changes both to the master and to the branch   Then  tens of commits later  I realized the branch is in much better state than the master  so I want the branch to  become  the master and disregard the changes on master   I cannot merge it  because I don t want to keep the changes on master  What should I do   Extra  In this case  the  old  master has already been push-ed to another repository such as GitHub  How does this change things

User · Answer

I found this simple method to work the best. It does not rewrite history and all previous check-ins of branch will be appended to the master. Nothing is lost, and you can clearly see what transpired in the commit log.

Objective: Make current state of "branch" the "master"

Working on a branch, commit and push your changes to make sure your local and remote repositories are up to date:

git checkout master      # Set local repository to master
git reset --hard branch  # Force working tree and index to branch
git push origin master    # Update remote repository

After this, your master will be the exact state of your last commit of branch and your master commit log will show all check-ins of the branch.

User · Answer

If you are using eGit in Eclipse    Right click on the project node  Choose Team   then Advanced   then Rename branch Then expand the remote tracking folder  Choose the branch with the wrong name  then click the rename button  rename it to whatever the new name  Choose the new master  then rename it to master

User · Answer

My way of doing things is the following   Backup branch git checkout -b master backup git push origin master backup git checkout master  Hard Reset master branch to the last common commit git reset --hard e8c8597  Merge git merge develop

User · Answer

To add to Jefromi s answer  if you don t want to place a meaningless merge in the history of the source branch  you can create a temporary branch for the ours merge  then throw it away   git checkout  lt source gt  git checkout -b temp              temporary branch for merge git merge -s ours  lt target gt         create merge commit with contents of  lt source gt  git checkout  lt target gt              fast forward  lt target gt  to merge commit git merge temp                        git branch -d temp                throw temporary branch away   That way the merge commit will only exist in the history of the target branch   Alternatively  if you don t want to create a merge at all  you can simply grab the contents of source and use them for a new commit on target   git checkout  lt source gt                             fill index with contents of  lt source gt  git symbolic-ref HEAD  lt target gt                    tell git we re committing on  lt target gt  git commit -m  Setting contents to  lt source gt       make an ordinary commit with the contents of  lt source gt

User · Answer

From what I understand  you can branch the current branch into an existing branch  In essence  this will overwrite master with whatever you have in the current branch   git branch -f master HEAD   Once you ve done that  you can normally push your local master branch  possibly requiring the force parameter here as well   git push -f origin master   No merges  no long commands  Simply branch and push    but  yes  this will rewrite history of the master branch  so if you work in a team you have got to know what you re doing         Alternatively  I found that you can push any branch to the any remote branch  so     This will force push the current branch to the remote master git push -f origin HEAD master    Switch current branch to master git checkout master    Reset the local master branch to what s on the remote git reset --hard origin master

User · Answer

The following steps are performed in the Git browser powered by Atlassian  Bitbucket server   Making  current-branch  as master   Make a branch out of master and name it    master-duplicate     Make a branch out of  current-branch  and name it     current-branch -copy     In repository setting  Bitbucket  change    Default Branch    to point at    master-duplicate     without this step  you will not be able to delete master -    In the Next step      Delete    master    branch - I did this step from source tree  you can do it from the CLI or Git browser  Rename     current-branch     to    master    and push to repository  this will create a new    master    branch still     current-branch     will exist   In repository settings  change    Default Branch    to point at    master

User · Answer

The problem with the other two answers is that the new master doesn t have the old master as an ancestor  so when you push it  everyone else will get messed up  This is what you want to do   git checkout better branch git merge --strategy ours master      keep the content of this branch  but record a merge git checkout master git merge better branch               fast-forward master up to the merge   If you want your history to be a little clearer  I d recommend adding some information to the merge commit message to make it clear what you ve done  Change the second line to   git merge --strategy ours --no-commit master git commit            add information to the template merge message

User · Answer

I found the answer I wanted in the blog post Replace the master branch with another branch in git   git checkout feature branch git merge -s ours --no-commit master git commit        Add a message regarding the replacement that you just did git checkout master git merge feature branch   It s essentially the same as Cascabel s answer  Except that the  option  he added below his solution is already embedded in my main code block   It s easier to find this way   I m adding this as a new answer  because if I need this solution later  I want to have all the code I am going to use in one code block   Otherwise  I may copy-paste  then read details below to see the line that I should have changed - after I already executed it

User · Answer

I don t have enough karma to comment  I know this is not what OP wanted  but you can do this if you know you are going to have a problem similar to OP in the future  Suppose  you know in advance that you want to create a branch which will have new awesome features and you also want that branch to be the master in the future and at the same time don t want to loose the current master branch  which will get lost if you initially make a separate branch and awesome features to it and then merge it to master   If this feels confusing  see the below diagram of the  bad  situation   To solve this  i e  to stop the loss of boring  do the following Basically   Create a copy of your current master by doing git branch boring Replace boring with whatever name you want to keep Now you can add new awesome features to your master branch and add boring features to the boring branch  You can still keep updating the boring branch and maybe use it with the intention of never merging it to master  You will not loose the boring features  Your master branch will have awesome features

User · Answer

Edit  You didn t say you had pushed to a public repo  That makes a world of difference   There are two ways  the  dirty  way and the  clean  way   Suppose your branch is named new-master   This is the clean way   git checkout new-master git branch -m master old-master git branch -m new-master master   And don t do this part   Just don t   But if you want to      git branch -d --force old-master   This will make the config files change to match the renamed branches   You can also do it the dirty way  which won t update the config files   This is kind of what goes on under the hood of the above     mv -i  git refs new-master  git refs master git checkout master

User · Answer

For me  i wanted my devl to be back to the master after it was ahead    While on develop    git checkout master git pull  git checkout develop git pull  git reset --hard origin master git push -f

User · Answer

One can also checkout all files from the other branch into master   git checkout master git checkout better branch --     and then commit all changes

User · Answer

Rename the branch to master by   git branch -M branch name master

User · Answer

Make sure everything is pushed up to your remote repository  GitHub   git checkout main  Overwrite  quot main quot  with  quot better branch quot   git reset --hard better branch  Force the push to your remote repository  git push -f origin main

User · Answer

The solutions given here  renaming the branch in  master   don t insist on the consequences for the remote  GitHub  repo    if you hadn t push anything since making that branch  you can rename it and push it without any problem  if you had push master on GitHub  you will need to  git push -f  the new branch  you can no longer push in a fast forward mode         -f     --force      Usually  the command refuses to update a remote ref that is not an ancestor of the local ref used to overwrite it  This flag disables the check  This can cause the remote repository to lose commits  use it with care    If others have already pulled your repo  they won t be able to pull that new master history without replacing their own master with that new GitHub master branch  or dealing with lots of merges   There are alternatives to a git push --force for public repos  Jefromi s answer  merging the right changes back to the original master  is one of them

[git] Make the current Git branch a master branch

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