Renaming branches remotely in Git

Question

If there is a repository that I only have git:// access to (and would usually just push+pull), is there a way to rename branches in that repository in the same

Answer 1

Adding to the answers already given, here is a version that first checks whether the new branch already exists (so you can safely use it in a script)

if git ls-remote --heads "$remote" \
    | cut -f2 \
    | sed 's:refs/heads/::' \
    | grep -q ^"$newname"$; then
    echo "Error: $newname already exists"
    exit 1
fi
git push "$oldname" "$remote/$oldname:refs/heads/$newname" ":$oldname"

(the check is from this answer)