OGG… I just want to push a local git branch to a remote with a different name…

Problem

Suppose you’re working on a local Git branch named feature/ml-prediction-enhancement. . When you attempt to push this branch to the remote repository, you realize that it doesn’t follow the branch naming convention. The correct format should be dev-2.2.x-0001/ml-prediction-enhancement.

Solution

There are two ways to resolve this:

Rename your local branch to follow the naming convention, then push it to the remote.
Push your current branch to the remote using the correct branch name without renaming it locally.

Solution 1: rename your local branch name

Renaming your local branch is explained on this post.

▶ Commands

# Step 1: rename your local branch
git branch -m <old-name> <new-name>

# Step 2: push to the remote
git push -u origin HEAD

Solution 2: Push a local git branch to a remote with a different name

git push origin local-branch-name:remote-branch-name tells Git to push the local branch local-branch-name to the remote repository origin and create/update the branch named remote-branch-name there.

But be aware the command carry some risks. If remote-branch-name already exists on the remote repository, this command will update it with the contents of your local branch. If others rely on the remote branch, your push might overwrite their changes, causing potential conflicts or loss of work.

To mitigate the above risk, it’s better to check the status of the remnote branch first with git fetch and git branch -a. DO NOT USE git push --force.

▶ Commands

# Step 1: git fetch and check your remote
git fetch 

# Step 2: Make sure your new remote name will not cause a problem
git branch -a  

# Step 3: Push your local branch with different remote name
git push origin local-branch-name:remote-branch-name

🍵 Green Tea Break: why use git fetch not git pull?

▶ git fetch keeps your local work untouched

git fetch only downloads the updates from the remote repository without altering your working directory or merging these changes into your current branch.
git pull combines git fetch and git merge, fetching changes from the remote and immediately merging them into your current branch. This can cause conflicts if there are differences between your branch and the remote branch.

If you just want to fetch remote information to avoid naming conflicts and don’t intend to pull remote changes into your local branch, it’s better to use git fetch because it helps avoid unexpected merges.

Use-cases

▶ Temporarily Sharing Work

If you wants to share your work temporarily for a review or help, you might not want to overwrite an existing remote branch, so better to push your local branch with a temporary name, like temp/20241031-login-test.

▶ Avoid Naming Conflicts

If there is already a branch with the same name on the remote, you might want to push their local branch under a different name to avoid conflicts. For example, if there’s already a branch called feature/login on the remote, you might push you local feature/login branch as feature/login-update.

In this case, after pushing to the remote, make sure the upstream branch points to your intended branch. It’s a good idea to run

git branch -vvv

and if the result is not what you expect, you can run

git branch --set-upstream-to=origin/new-feature

to set your upstream branch to the correct one.