How to create a "master" branch in a Git repo after an initial commit has been made?

Question

I've created a feature branch in an empty Git repo and pushed it to Github. Now I can't create a PR from it as it's considered a "default" branch and there's no master branch. How can update the repo so that:

• There's a master branch (say, pointing to a commit adding an empty README file)
• There's a feature branch with my change, which can be used to create a PR ?

Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Based on your question, your repository now looks like this:

o
^
feature

and you want to make it look like this:

o-------o
^       ^
master  feature

while also making master the new default branch on GitHub, instead of feature.

One way to go about it is to create a new "initial" commit on the feature branch, move it to the beginning of the history and create a new master branch that points to it.

Here are the steps:

git checkout feature
git commit --allow-empty -m "Initial commit" (you can create the README file here, instead)
git rebase -i --root

# The TODO file will look something like this:

pick 1234abc Adds the feature
pick 5678edg Initial commit

# Move the "Initial commit" line to the top of the file

pick 5678edg Initial commit
pick 1234abc Adds the feature

# Then save and close

At this point, your history will look like this:

o-------o
        ^
        feature

Now, create the master branch pointing to the commit before the one referenced by feature:

git checkout -b master feature^

At this point, all you have to do is push master to GitHub with:

git push -u origin master

Finally, you'll have to go to your repository's settings on GitHub to make master the new default branch. See GitHub's documentation on how to do that.