Git Branches

Renaming Branches

A local-only branch can be renamed easily. Given a repository named my-repo:

# ensure that you are in the repository directory and checked into the target branch
cd path/to/my-repo
git checkout master

# to rename branch 'master' to 'dev'...
git branch -m master dev

To rename a remote branch, first follow the above process. The remaining steps can produce errors.

git push -u origin dev
git push origin --delete master

If git returns an error like  ! [remote rejected] master (deletion of the current branch prohibited), then you need to adjust the HEAD of the remote repository. This determines what branch a new repository clone will start on. The 'default' branch cannot be deleted for obvious reasons.

Keeping with the example above, access the bare remote repository my-repo.git and edit my-repo.git/HEAD such that it points to the new branch's head.

ref: refs/heads/dev

Valid values correspond to the branch references in my-repo.git/refs/heads/.

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