Re: Git clone - head not pointing to master

From: Konstantin Khomoutov <flatworm@users.sourceforge.net>
Date: Dec 30, 2011, 12:40 UTC
Message-ID: <20111230164058.f127bf2d.kostix@domain007.com>
In-Reply-To: <4EFD9F11.5030309@volitionlabs.com>

On Fri, 30 Dec 2011 16:52:57 +0530 Vibin Nair <vibin@volitionlabs.com> wrote:

Show 27 quoted lines

>   I am a Git beginner. Recently i started working on a codebase (that
> is checked in to a git repository) of our client, who is not very
> aware about how git works.
> The repository has multiple branches such as
> 
> origin/user1
> origin/master
> origin/user2
> 
> Now when i take a clone of this repository : git clone <repo-url>, a 
> clone of the repo is created on my machine.
> 
> But when i do a : "git branch" it shows
> 
> user1 *
> 
> which means that the "head" is pointing to the "user1" branch.
> 
> The client told me that all the recent code were being merged into
> the "master" branch and hence the "user1" branch has code which is
> older than "master" branch.
> 
> I had 2 queries :
> 
> 1. Is it possible to make the "head" of the remote point to "master" 
> instead of "user1", so that other members of my team get the latest
> code when they try to clone the repository.

`git clone` checks out the branch which the HEAD ref in the remote repo points to. You can use `git symbolic-ref` to retarget HEAD if it's a bare repository. If the repository is non-bare HEAD tracks what's checked out, so it can be changed by doing `git checkout`. Note that you can pass the "-b <branch>" command-line option to `git clone` to make it create a local tracking branch and check it out for an arbitrary remote branch <branch>.

> 2. Is there any way to safely merge "user1" to "master".

This question has little sense because it heavily depends on what you mean by "safely". The correct way to state a question like this is to think whether merging user1 to master has sense from the project's development standpoint.