Hi.
Observation: When git clone --bare is used on a non-bare repo, the HEAD is put in ./refs/HEAD, and conflicts with ./HEAD in the sense that they may end up decorelated over time.
Suggestion: When bare cloning on a non-bare repo, do not put the HEAD of the non-bare repo in refs/HEAD like every branch, but treat it separately: put it in ./HEAD, not ./refs/HEAD.
Context: I was setting up an alternate repository for cargo crates, which requires a git repo to hold the index. So I wrote my config.json in a non-bare git repo, and "deployed" as a bare repo by git clone --bare. This created a ./refs/HEAD. However, the cargo crates repository I deployed (ktra) also updated the HEAD of that repo whenever I published private crates on it. So HEAD and refs/HEAD were not in sync. And, in the end, these got unsynchronised and I could not perform cargo fetch or cargo build with this alternate repo.
Ratonale: HEAD is just not a normal branch, semantically. It is what you have at the tip of your fingers in the shell with non-bare git repos. Treating as "just as all other branches" may be programatically convenient, but, in the end, it bypasses the fact that it just is not quite a normal branch. As the problem I experienced highlights. Which is why I would argue in favour of a distinguished treatment of HEADs when bare cloning a non-bare repo.
Best regards,
Guillaume Yziquel.