Question

A team lead is standardizing repository conventions across the organization. One older repository still uses 'master' as its default branch, and the team wants to rename it to 'main' while keeping all history, open pull requests, and existing collaborators intact. What is the recommended way to accomplish this on GitHub?

Accepted Answer

Use the repository's branch settings to rename the 'master' branch to 'main', which automatically retargets open pull requests and updates the default branch

Answer

Delete the 'master' branch and create a new empty branch named 'main' to replace it

Answer

Create a brand-new repository named with 'main' as the default and manually copy the files over

Answer

Archive the repository so the old branch name is preserved as read-only history