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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-15T23:52:56+00:00

I have a bare repository that’s used as the central store for my project.

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I have a bare repository that’s used as the central store for my project. All the developers do git clone <repo> to share with it. When they do the clone, they get a checkout of the master branch (unless they do git clone -n) because repo.git/HEAD contains ref: refs/heads/master, making this the Active Branch.

The question is, how do I change the Active Branch properly? I could simply hack the repo.git/HEAD file directly, but that seems nasty and, well, hacky.

I tried doing git checkout <otherbranch> in the repo .git directory, but that failed because I wasn’t in a work tree.

I tried git update-ref HEAD refs/heads/otherbranch but that just updated refs/heads/master to be the same as refs/heads/otherbranch (okay, I did that one in a dummy repository, not my production one!)

I tried git update-ref --no-deref HEAD refs/heads/otherbranch and that almost worked. It updated the HEAD file, but it set it to the SHA1 of the commit pointed to by refs/heads/otherbranch.

I’m testing with git version 1.7.0.2.msysgit.0.

I’m guessing there’s no way to do this through git push, as allowing all and sundry to change your default branch seems a bit unsafe (!), but surely there’s a better way to do it in the repo .git directory than directly hacking the HEAD file.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    If you have access to the remote bare repo, this article suggests:

    git symbolic-ref HEAD refs/heads/mybranch

    Which will update the HEAD file in your repository so that it contains:

    ref: refs/heads/mybranch

    as documented in the git-symbolic-ref

    If you don’t have access to the remote repo, see my previous answer.

    Remember that a command like git remote set-head:

    • doesn’t change the default branch of the remote repo.
      It only changes a remote tracking branch stored in your local repo as refs/remotes/<name>/HEAD

    • doesn’t change HEAD itself (again, only refs/remotes/<name>/HEAD), hence the need for
      git symbolic-ref.

    So git remote set-head is not the answer here.
    git symbolic-ref HEAD is, if you have direct access to the remote repo.

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