If your remote is completely empty and has no commits, you can just push normally. If it has an auto-generated "initial commit" (pretty sure Github does something like that), you could force push, or merge your local branch into the remote branch and push normally. I think cloning the repo and copying the contents of your local repo into it is the worst option: you'll lose all local commits.

[–] Jayjader@jlai.lu 2 points 2 days ago

If it's a single, generated, "initial" commit that I actually want to keep (say, for ex I used the forge to generate a license file) then I would often rebase on top of it. Quick and doesn't get rid of anything.

[–] firelizzard@programming.dev 1 points 3 days ago

You can also just tell GitHub to not do that.

[–] stembolts@programming.dev 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

True, in the situation with a local history maybe it's worthwhile to --force to nuke an empty remote. In that case it is practical to do so. I just typically like to find non-force options.