GitHub Branch Renamer

A tool to rename the master branch for an entire account at once.

Installation

macOS

Install with Homebrew.

brew install erbridge/tap/github-branch-renamer

Everything else

You're on your own, I'm afraid. Refer to the Brewfile for clues about required dependencies.

Usage

$ gbr
Rename the 'master' branch for an entire account at once.

This tool will find all repositories on GitHub belonging to an account that:

  - aren't forks
  - aren't archived or disabled
  - have their default branch set to 'master'

It will then rename the master branch to 'main' by default, and set that as the
default branch on GitHub instead of 'master'.

By default, the 'master' branch will be left untouched to prevent any accidental
data loss. If you'd like to delete those branches, set the '--delete' flag.

You must choose to either do a dry run ('--dry-run') or force the changes
('--force'). You must also specify one of '--org' or '--user' (but not both) to
select the account to collect repositories from.

USAGE
  gbr [flags]

FLAGS
  -o, --org string          The organization to collect repositories in
  -u, --user string         The username to collect repositories in
  -b, --new-branch string   The new name for the master branch (defaults to
                              'main')
  -d, --delete              Delete the master branch from GitHub
  -n, --dry-run             Report what will happen, without making any changes
                               on GitHub
  -f, --force               Run for real, making changes on GitHub

Why?

The conversation about the origin of "master" as a term in technology has come back around again recently. It's clear that Git's default branch name, master, originated from a master-slave metaphor, and even if it didn't, it still has that connotation for some people. We should rename our branches to something else to reduce the harm our language causes.

Renaming branches can be a time consuming, manual process, especially if your repositories are counted in the hundreds. It would be preferable to automate as much of that as possible. This tool attempts to do that.