DEV Community

Stephen Charles Weiss
Stephen Charles Weiss

Posted on • Originally published at stephencharlesweiss.com on

Git - Renaming A Branch Locally & Remote

To rename the name of a branch, there are four potential steps:

  1. Checkout the existing branch (the one you want to rename): git checkout <old_name>
  2. Rename the local branch by moving it: git branch -m <new_name>
  3. If you’ve already pushed the <old_name> branch to the remote repository delete the <old_name> remote branch: git push origin --delete <old_name>
  4. Finally push the <new_name> local branch and reset the upstream branch: git push origin -u <new_name>

That’s it. At this point you have successfully renamed your local and remote Git branch.

A note about the -m flag:

Similar to the mv command in Bash, the -m flag is for moving. Since you’re on a branch, Git infers the branch that’s being moved, however, you can be explicit and consolidate steps 1 and 2 with git checkout -m <oldbranch> <newbranch>.

Additional Reading

Top comments (0)