Orphan branch in libgit2sharp - version-control

Question

How do you create an orphan branch in libgit2sharp?
All i could find are methods which create a branch which points to a commit.
I'm looking for an effect similar to the command:
git checkout --orphan BRANCH_NAME

Answer 1

git checkout --orphan BRANCH_NAME actually moves the HEAD to an unborn branch BRANCH_NAME without altering the working directory nor the index.
You can perform a similar operation with LibGit2Sharp by updating the target of the HEAD reference with repo.Refs.UpdateTarget() method.
The following test demonstrates this
[Fact]
public void CanCreateAnUnbornBranch()
{
string path = CloneStandardTestRepo();
using (var repo = new Repository(path))
{
// No branch named orphan
Assert.Null(repo.Branches["orphan"]);
// HEAD doesn't point to an unborn branch
Assert.False(repo.Info.IsHeadUnborn);
// Let's move the HEAD to this branch to be created
repo.Refs.UpdateTarget("HEAD", "refs/heads/orphan");
Assert.True(repo.Info.IsHeadUnborn);
// The branch still doesn't exist
Assert.Null(repo.Branches["orphan"]);
// Create a commit against HEAD
var signature = new Signature("Me", "me#there.com", DateTimeOffset.Now);
Commit c = repo.Commit("New initial root commit", signature, signature);
// Ensure this commit has no parent
Assert.Equal(0, c.Parents.Count());
// The branch now exists...
Branch orphan = repo.Branches["orphan"];
Assert.NotNull(orphan);
// ...and points to that newly created commit
Assert.Equal(c, orphan.Tip);
}
}