Alias git branches to replace "master" with "main"

Question

I work on a bunch of different repos - many of them use master, and many of them use main.

I also have various shell aliases set up for git commands, e.g. gcm for git checkout master.

The problem is that I cannot use these aliases on repos where master doesn't exist. It's obviously not a big deal, because I just need to type out the command manually in that case, but it's slightly annoying.

I am wondering if there's a way I can "alias" branches in git, so when I say git push origin master it can just automatically replace that with main.

Answer 1

In a repository that has main, but not master, the simplest is to create a branch alias master that points to main:

git symbolic-ref refs/heads/master refs/heads/main

This gives the following list of branches (for example):

$ git branch -a
* main
  master -> main
  side

Now everytime your commands reference master they apply to main. Even when you push master, the actual target is main:

$ git push origin master
Enumerating objects: 5, done.
Counting objects: 100% (5/5), done.
Writing objects: 100% (3/3), 241 bytes | 241.00 KiB/s, done.
Total 3 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 0
To ../gitupstream
   f57e131..15c1aad  master -> main