Easy Guide to Configuring a Git Repository with a Custom Branch Name

Greetings, fellow code wizards! In this article, let’s explore how to configure a Git repository with a custom branch name other than master.

If you’ve used Git before, you probably know that when you create a Git repository, the default branch name is usually master. However, nowadays, hardly anyone uses master as the main / default branch. In reality, most of us prefer to use main as the branch name. Even platforms like GitHub and GitLab use main as the default branch when creating a repository. It's a bit puzzling why Git still sticks with master as the default branch name when main has become the standard across the software industry, but that's just how it is.

Let’s now explore how we can set up a git repository with main as the default branch name or choose any other custom branch name as the default one.

Note: Before diving in, please ensure that your Git version is 2.28.0 or higher, as this feature was added in that release. (If you're using Ubuntu, follow this link for the command to upgrade Git to the latest version.)

Configuring Branch on Initialization:

We can set up the branch name directly when initializing a Git repository using the --initial-branch or -b parameter, like in the following example:

git init --initial-branch <branch-name>
# or
git init -b <branch-name>

For example, if we want to initialize the branch name as development, the command would be:

git init --initial-branch development
# or
git init -b development

Configuring Default Branch for All Repositories:

We can also set up the default setting to use a custom-named branch for all repositories. This way, we won’t need to specify it every time we create a git repository, especially if we want to keep the main branch consistent across all repositories.

This can be achieved by setting init.defaultBranch globally using the command below:

git config --global init.defaultBranch <branch-name>

For example, if we want to set the default branch as main for all new git repositories we create, we can do this by using the following command:

git config — global init.defaultBranch main

Now, every time we create a new git repository using the git init command, the default branch will be named main by default.

I hope this article helps you set a custom branch name when starting a git repository. Please share your feedback and suggestions for improvement. Thank you. Happy coding!