Rename your default branch on GitHub easily. By default it renames master to main, but is configurable using the --new and --old flags.

If provided with an --org, --user or (--org and --team) arguments, it will run on all repositories owned by that org, user or team. Alternatively, you can provide a --repo argument to edit a single repo. See Usage for more examples.

For each repo, this tool will:

• Create a new branch at the same commit SHA as the old one
• Update all open pull requests to point at the new branch
• Update the default branch for the repo
• Delete the old branch
• Update known URL patterns in source files
• Update any branch protections for $old to $new. (This does not work with patterns, it has to be an exact match)

npm install -g github-default-branch

git clone https://github.com/mheap/github-default-branch.git
cd github-default-branch
npm ci

Create a personal access token with the repo scope. This is the value for <token> in the examples.

If you don't want your token to be stored in your shell history, you can set GITHUB_TOKEN in the environment and that will be read instead

# Rename master to main
github-default-branch --pat <token> --repo user/repo

# Rename dev to develop
github-default-branch --pat <token> --repo user/repo --old dev --new develop

# Rename all repos owned by an org
github-default-branch --pat <token> --org my-org-name

# Rename all repos owned by a user
github-default-branch --pat <token> --user my-user

# Rename all repos owned by a team
github-default-branch --pat <token> --org my-org-name --team my-team-slug

Set DEBUG="ghdb*" as an environment variable to see debug information

You might want to skip any of the available transforms (such as deleting the old branch). You can add --skip-[transform-name] to disable the transform e.g. --skip-delete-old-branch.

Pending transforms:

• Copy branch protections instead of updating if --skip-delete-old-branch is used (#26)
• Retarget draft releases (#30)

Part of this script checks for the existence of files and updates their contents. Replacements are the mechanism for these updates.

Each .js file in the replacements folder is given a chance to run during the content updating step of the script. Each file in replacements is expected to export a function, that function receives all of the options that are available to the outmost script.

If there is nothing to replace, then the script moves on to the next replacement.

Add a file to replacements with a .js extension

Like this:

module.exports = function ({
  owner, // string - repo owner
  repo, // string - repo name
  old, // string - old branch name
  target, // string - new branch name
  octokit, // Octokit - oktokit instance
  verbose, // boolean - verbose flag
  isDryRun, // boolean - dry run flag
}) {
  // code goes here
  return {
    path: "<path to file in repo>",
    replacements: [
      {
        from: "<from string>",
        to: "<to string>",
      },
      {
        from: "<from string>",
        to: "<to string>",
      },
    ],
  };
};

The file with the path in your repo will have any line matching from be swapped out with to