Renaming branch pushes changes to previous branch name

[abhishekbedi1432]

The problem

Renaming branch pushes changes to previous branch name

Release version

Version 3.4.16 (arm64)

Operating system

mac

Steps to reproduce the behavior

1. Checkout a branch say develop/br1
2. Push the branch to remote
3. Rename the branch to develop/br2
4. Push the branch to remote
5. Create a Pull request. It showsdevelop/br1 --> develop instead of develop/br2

Log files

NA

Screenshots

NA

Additional context

No response

[tidy-dev]

@abhishekbedi1432 Thank you for reaching out. This is expected Git behavior as the rename command does not change the remote name and as such we add a warning in the rename dialog when a remote exists.

You can use a more advanced and uncommon workflow pattern and open your command line while the branch is checked out and run git branch --unset-upstream. This will make it so your local branch is no longer associated with the remote branch and when you push again will create a remote branch with the new name.

You may wonder why? It is based on Git being used for collaboration and if you were to rename a branch locally and it also renamed it remotely. Then, another collaborator who has pulled that branch and add commits now pushes to that branch, they are now unintentionally in a different history then you. There are use cases where you might intend this behavior, but it is not readily apparent when you rename locally nor a common workflow. GitHub Desktop follows Git behavior to help reduce the chance of a user unintentionally impacting their remote and their team. Thus, we recommend that if this is your intention that you go to your remote and rename your branch there (communicate with other collaborators if need be) and then fetch that newly renamed branch to your local repository.