How do I create an orphan branch from the Github API?

Question

I want to create the gh-pages branch from the Github API. Is there an easy way to do this?

If not, how would I create an orphan branch from the Github API?

Answer 1

It is possible to do this by:

1. Check whether the branch already exists
2. If not, then create a commit that refers to git's empty tree SHA
3. Then create a ref to that commit

You can find some CoffeeScript example code for how to do that from https://github.com/noflo/noflo-github/blob/master/components/CreateOrphanBranch.coffee#L31

Here is one such branch created this way: https://github.com/the-domains/example.net/tree/branch_1403616324001

Update: this method only works if the git repository has previous orphan branches. If it is a newly-created repo created via GitHub's API using the auto_init option it won't work. I've contacted GitHub about this.