How to make your git aliases work with both master and main

The linked article Show archive.org snapshot found a simple way to rewrite legacy git aliases to make them work with differently named default branches

• Step 1: Decide which is the most common default branch name of your projects, e.g. master. Define it as the global init.defaultBranch git configuration :

Copygit config --global init.defaultBranch master

• Step 2: Overwrite the value in each project directory that uses different defaults

Copy# cd /path/to/project, then run:
git config --local init.defaultBranch main

• Step 3: Adjust your ~/.gitconfig aliases to use the defaultBranch variable, e.g.:

Copy[alias]
  merge_request = push origin HEAD -o merge_request.create -o merge_request.target=master -o merge_request.draft

becomes

Copy[alias]
  merge_request = !git push origin HEAD -o merge_request.create -o merge_request.target="$(git config init.defaultBranch)" -o merge_request.draft

• Step 3: Adjust your ~/.bashrc aliases to use the defaultBranch variable

Copyalias gdm='git diff --color-moved=dimmed_zebra master'

becomes

Copyalias gdm="git diff --color-moved=dimmed_zebra $(git config init.defaultBranch)"

Caveat

Aliases are evaluated only once whenever you open a new terminal. This means that you cannot expect these aliases to adjust when you cd from one project into another. You need to open a new shell in this case (or source the ~/.bashrc).

You can work around this by evaluating the expression every time the command runs:

Copyalias gdm="git config init.defaultBranch | xargs git diff --color-moved=dimmed_zebra"

If you want to use other aliases (like gd for git diff) and other argument positioning for the default branch name, you may use this monstrosity:

Copyalias diff-stats-for-default-branch="git config init.defaultBranch | xargs -i ${BASH_ALIASES[gd]} {} --stat"