ramnathv/gh-pages.md

## gh-pages.md

      
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              gh-pages.md
            
          
    Creating a clean gh-pages branch

This is the sequence of steps to follow to create a root gh-pages branch. It is based on a question at SO
cd /path/to/repo-name
git symbolic-ref HEAD refs/heads/gh-pages
rm .git/index
git clean -fdx
echo "My GitHub Page" > index.html
git add .
git commit -a -m "First pages commit"
git push origin gh-pages

Why do we need to do all this, instead of just calling git branch gh-pages. Well, if you are at master and you do git branch gh-pages, gh-pages will be based off master.
Here, the intention is to create a branch for github pages, which is typically not associated with the history of your repo (master and other branches) and hence the usage of git symbolic-ref. This creates a "root branch", which is one without a previous history.
Note that it is also called an orphan branch and git checkout --orphan will now do the same thing as the git symbolic-ref that was being done before. Check out this question on SO2 as well.