Delete master error (GIT push origin: Master)

All good so far. We next want to delete the branch on GitHub. However, if we do this the naive way:

git push origin :master

We just get an error like this:

remote: error: refusing to delete the current branch: refs/heads/masterTo [email protected]:matthew-brett/datarray.git! [remote rejected] master (deletion of the current branch prohibited)error: failed to push some refs to ‘[email protected]:matthew-brett/datarray.git‘

That is because GitHub is looking atMasterBranch to provide the Web content when you browse that repository. So we first have to make GitHub look at ourPlaceholderBranch instead, then deleteMaster.

First push upPlaceholderBranch:

git checkout placeholder # if not on placeholder alreadygit push origin placeholder

Then setPlaceholderTo be the GitHub default branch. Go to the main GitHub page for your forked repository, and click on the "admin" button.

There's a "Default branch" dropdown list near the top of the screen. From there, selectPlaceholder. On the interface I'm looking at, a green tick appears above the dropdown list. Now you can do (from the command line ):

git push origin :master

And-no master branch...