git - Can I orphan an existing branch?

Question

I've created a few branches in a repo, and realized too late (after making various changes to them) that I should have made them orphans. Is it possible to orphan them after the fact?

Answer 1

I'm sure it's possible. There might be a more efficient way, but this seems like it would work:

1. Find the first commit in your old branch, and call it FIRST.
2. git checkout --orphan new-branch $FIRST
3. git checkout old-branch
4. git rebase --onto new-branch $FIRST

Now you have the original branch at old-branch and a new, orphaned branch at new-branch. You can, if you like, either delete or rename old-branch, and rename new-branch to old-branch.