Change a Git remote HEAD to point to something besides master

Question

How do I set a Git remote s HEAD reference to point to something besides  master    My project has a policy not to use a  master  branch  all branches are to have meaningful names   Furthermore  the canonical master repository is only accessible via ssh     with no shell access  like GitHub or Unfuddle    My problem is that the remote repository still has a HEAD reference to refs heads master  but I need it to point to a different branch   This is causing two problems    When cloning the repo  there this       warning  remote HEAD refers to nonexistent ref  unable to checkout    That s confusing and inconvenient  The web-based code browser depends on HEAD as a basis for browsing the tree  I need HEAD to point to a valid branch  then

User · Answer

Update  This only works for the local copy of the repository  the  client    Please see others  comments below   With a recent version of git  Feb 2014   the correct procedure would be   git remote set-head  REMOTE NAME  BRANCH   So for example  switching the head on remote origin to branch develop would be   git remote set-head origin develop

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Related to the question  I ended up here when searching for   How do I make a local repo aware of a changed default branch on GitHub  For completeness  adding the answer   git remote set-head origin -a

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Since you mention GitHub  to do it on their site simply go into your project  then     admin  gt  Default Branch  gt   choose something   Done

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First  create the new branch you would like to set as your default  for example     gt git branch main  Next  push that branch to the origin     gt git push origin main  Now when you login to your GitHub account  you can go to your repository and choose Settings Default Branch and choose  main     Then  if you so choose  you can delete the master branch     gt git push origin  master

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If you have access to the remote repo from a shell  just go into the  git  or the main dir if its a bare repo  and change the HEAD file to point to the correct head   For example  by default it always contains  refs  refs heads master   but if you need foo to be the HEAD instead  just edit the HEAD file and change the contents to  refs  refs heads foo

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There was already basically the same question  create a git symbolic ref in remote repository   which received no universal answer    But there are a specific answers for various git  farms   where multiple users can manage git repos through a restricted interface  via http and ssh   http   Github com  http   Gitorious org  http   repo or cz  Girar  http   git altlinux org     These specific answers might be useful for those reading this page and thinking about these specific services    Now they have a drop-down menu for selecting the HEAD branch at http   repo or cz  example  http   repo or cz editproj cgi name for-me-and-for-all imz git   and at http   gitorious org  too  look somewhere in the settings   and at http   GitHub com  admin   Default Branch    choose something   thanks to  srcspider s answer   Since v2 6  the default branch can be set in the Web interface under  Projects     List        Branches   In v2 12  Gerrit added a new set-head command that can be used over ssh   and in Girar  running on http   git altlinux org to build packages for ALT s distro   one can the ssh interface for this     ssh git alt help   fgrep branch default-branch  lt path to git repository gt    lt branch gt      for example ssh git alt default-branch packages autosshd git sisyphus to change the HEAD in the remote repo autosshd git to point to the sisyphus branch

User · Answer

See  http   www kernel org pub software scm git docs git-symbolic-ref html  This sets the default branch in the git repository   You can run this in bare or mirrored repositories   Usage      git symbolic-ref HEAD refs heads  lt branch name gt

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For gitolite people  gitolite supports a command called -- wait for it -- symbolic-ref   It allows you to run that command remotely if you have W  write  permission to the repo

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You can create a detached master branch using only porcelain Git commands   git init touch GO AWAY git add GO AWAY git commit -m  GO AWAY - this branch is detached from reality    That gives us a master branch with a rude message  you may want to be more polite    Now we create our  real  branch  let s call it trunk in honour of SVN  and divorce it from master   git checkout -b trunk git rm GO AWAY git commit --amend --allow-empty -m  initial commit on detached trunk    Hey  presto   gitk --all will show master and trunk with no link between them   The  magic  here is that --amend causes git commit to create a new commit with the same parent as the current HEAD  then make HEAD point to it   But the current HEAD doesn t have a parent as it s the initial commit in the repository  so the new HEAD doesn t get one either  making them detached from each other   The old HEAD commit doesn t get deleted by git-gc because refs heads master still points to it   The --allow-empty flag is only needed because we re committing an empty tree   If there were some git add s after the git rm then it wouldn t be necessary   In truth  you can create a detached branch at any time by branching the initial commit in the repository  deleting its tree  adding your detached tree  then doing git commit --amend   I know this doesn t answer the question of how to modify the default branch on the remote repository  but it gives a clean answer on how to create a detached branch

User · Answer

Simple just log into your GitHub account and on the far right side in the navigation menu choose Settings  in the Settings Tab choose Default Branch and return back to main page of your repository that did the trick for me

User · Answer

There was almost the same question on GitHub a year ago  The idea was to rename the master branch  git branch -m master development git branch -m published master git push -f origin master    Making master have what you want people to use  and do all other work in branches    a  quot git-symbolic-ref HEAD refs head published quot  would not be propagated to the remote repo  This is similar to  quot How do I delete origin master in Git quot    As said in this thread   emphasis mine    quot git clone quot  creates only a single local branch  To do that  it looks at the HEAD ref of the remote repo  and creates a local branch with the same name as the remote branch referenced by it  So to wrap that up  you have repo A and clone it   HEAD references refs heads master and that exists - gt  you get a local branch called master  starting from origin master  HEAD references refs heads anotherBranch and that exists - gt  you get a local branch called anotherBranch  starting from origin anotherBranch  HEAD references refs heads master and that doesn t exist - gt   quot git clone quot  complains   Not sure if there s any way to directly modify the HEAD ref in a repo    which is the all point of your question  I know       Maybe the only way would be a  quot publication for the poor quot   where you     git-symbolic-ref HEAD refs head published    git-update-server-info    rsync -az  git   server  local path to git myRepo git   But that would involve write access to the server  which is not always possible   As I explain in  quot Git  Correct way to change Active Branch in a bare repository  quot   git remote set-head wouldn t change anything on the remote repo  It would only change the remote tracking branch stored locally in your local repo  in remotes  lt name gt  HEAD   With Git 2 29  Q4 2020    quot git remote  set-head man  quot  that failed still said something that hints the operation went through  which was misleading  See commit 5a07c6c  17 Sep 2020  by Christian Schlack  cschlack    Merged by Junio C Hamano -- gitster -- in commit 39149df  22 Sep 2020   remote  don t show success message when set-head fails Signed-off-by  Christian Schlack   Suppress the message  origin HEAD set to master  in case of an error    git remote set-head origin -a error  Not a valid ref  refs remotes origin master origin HEAD set to master

[git] Change a Git remote HEAD to point to something besides master

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