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I need to delete a master branch, but it's proving to be hard. I just want to clean that branch out and start new. I am deleting from the dev branch. I want master on GitHub to be clean.
# git push origin --delete master
> To https://github.com/mymasterb.git ! [remote rejected] master
> (deletion of the current branch prohibited) error: failed to push some
> refs to 'https://github.com/mymaster.git'
How do I quite simply start my master with a fresh slate?
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To delete a remote branch, you can't use the git branch command. Instead, use the git push command with --delete flag, followed by the name of the branch you want to delete. You also need to specify the remote name ( origin in this case) after git push .
Can the master branch be deleted? The master branch is just a type of branch in the repository, which is also the default branch by default. But, as a rule in Git, default branches cannot be deleted. So, to delete the master branch first, the user has to change the default branch.
If you are sure you want to delete it, run ' git branch -D issue-5632 '. This error is caused because we have some un-merged changes in branch issue-5632 due to which the branch delete has failed. In such case either you can delete the branch forcefully or merge the changes and then perform the delete operation.
Deleting a branch LOCALLY Delete a branch with git branch -d <branch> . The -d option will delete the branch only if it has already been pushed and merged with the remote branch. Use -D instead if you want to force the branch to be deleted, even if it hasn't been pushed or merged yet.
As explained in "Deleting your master branch" by Matthew Brett, you need to change your GitHub repo default branch.
You need to go to the GitHub page for your forked repository, and click on the “Settings” button.
Click on the "Branches" tab on the left hand side. There’s a “Default branch” dropdown list near the top of the screen.
From there, select placeholder (where placeholder is the dummy name for your new default branch).
Confirm that you want to change your default branch.
Now you can do (from the command line):
git push origin :master
Or, since 2012, you can delete that same branch directly on GitHub:
That was announced in Sept. 2013, a year after I initially wrote that answer.
For small changes like documentation fixes, typos, or if you’re just a walking software compiler, you can get a lot done in your browser without needing to clone the entire repository to your computer.
Note: for BitBucket, Tum reports in the comments:
About the same for Bitbucket
Repo -> Settings -> Repository details -> Main branch
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To answer the question literally (since GitHub is not in the question title), also be aware of this post over on superuser. EDIT: Answer copied here in relevant part, slightly modified for clarity in square brackets:
You're getting rejected because you're trying to delete the branch that your origin has currently "checked out".
If you have direct access to the repo, you can just open up a shell [in the bare repo] directory and use good old
git branchto see what branch origin is currently on. To change it to another branch, you have to usegit symbolic-ref HEAD refs/heads/another-branch.
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The quickest way is to switch default branch from master to another and you can remove master branch from the web interface.
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