Change a Git remote HEAD to point to something besides master

Question

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 "git-symbolic-ref HEAD refs/head/published" would not be propagated to the remote repo)

This is similar to "How do I delete origin/master in Git".

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As said in this thread: (emphasis mine)

"git clone" 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
  -> you get a local branch called master, starting from origin/master

• HEAD references refs/heads/anotherBranch and that exists
  -> you get a local branch called anotherBranch, starting from origin/anotherBranch

• HEAD references refs/heads/master and that doesn't exist
  -> "git clone" 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 ;) )

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Maybe the only way would be a "publication for the poor", 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.

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As I explain in "Git: Correct way to change Active Branch in a bare repository?", 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/<name>/HEAD.

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With Git 2.29 (Q4 2020), "git remote set-head^(man)" 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

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

Since you mention GitHub, to do it on their site simply go into your project, then...

admin > Default Branch > (choose something)

Done.

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/<branch name>

(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 <path to git repository> [<branch>] $ 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.

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'.