Subject: Re: git branch behavior after git init needs fixing

From: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 09 Feb 2026 14:38:03 -0800

Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]> writes:

> Ben Knoble <[email-masked]> writes:
>
>> You are probably looking for init.defaultBranch and the 3.0
>> breaking changes plan (which will make main the default).
>
> In other words, run
>
>     $ git config --global init.defaultbranch main
>
> just once to live in the future?  That sounds like a sensible
> suggestion to me.

And that is excatly what "git init" gives our users already, until
s/he sees it sufficiently often and declines to see it anymore, at
which point they are on their own ;-)

After temporarily disabling init.defaultBranch setting in my
configuration files (and I left advice.defaultBranchName setting to
the default), here is what I (or anybody) would get.

$ git init
hint: Using 'master' as the name for the initial branch. This default branch name
hint: will change to "main" in Git 3.0. To configure the initial branch name
hint: to use in all of your new repositories, which will suppress this warning,
hint: call:
hint:
hint: 	git config --global init.defaultBranch <name>
hint:
hint: Names commonly chosen instead of 'master' are 'main', 'trunk' and
hint: 'development'. The just-created branch can be renamed via this command:
hint:
hint: 	git branch -m <name>
hint:
hint: Disable this message with "git config set advice.defaultBranchName false"
Initialized empty Git repository in /var/tmp/x/.git/