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Why is my git on Windows is weird with main branches (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world to c/learn_programming@programming.dev
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  • It tries its best to default to master.
  • it always creates a master branch.
  • it throws a bunch of errors when trying to push to main.
  • I always have to do some random fiddling to make it work with the main branch, but at least once I made master the main one instead.
  • it ruined a few releases of mine, by publishing the older branch.
  • apparently this is very abnormal, and no one saw things like this.
  • every time I initialize a new repo, I make sure to run a git clone to initialize it on my PC, which is called main, then it defaults to master for no known reason.
  • checked the .gitconfig file, and nothing unusual.
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[-] Arghblarg@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 month ago

I don't know the incantation offhand, but certainly there is a way to tell your git to treat 'main' as the default.

However, 'master' actually was the historical default; 'main' is a newer name (search online if you are interested in why some repos and git hosting providers switched to use 'main' ... warning, opinions differ on whether said reasons were considered sensible or not).

this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2026
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