From: Philip Oakley <philipoakley@iee.org>
Date: Tue, 23 May 2017 23:24:52 GMT
Subject: Re: [Non-Bug] cloning a repository with a default MASTER branch tries to check out the master branch
Message-ID: <76BD8B6A1511438B8CCB79C616F3BC5B@PhilipOakley>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqa864mea3.fsf@gitster.mtv.corp.google.com>

From: "Junio C Hamano" <gitster@pobox.com>
> Félix Saparelli <felix@passcod.name> writes:
>
>> I created a git repository that, for joke reasons, has a single branch
>> called MASTER (in uppercase). Upon cloning this repo, git attempts to
>> checkout the master branch (in lowercase), which does not exist.
>
> See what Git told you carefully and you can guess, I think.

guessing is rarely a good user experience ;-) however...
>
>> $ git clone git@github.com:passcod/UPPERCASE-NPM.git
>> Cloning into 'UPPERCASE-NPM'...
>> remote: Counting objects: 14, done.
>> remote: Compressing objects: 100% (11/11), done.
>> remote: Total 14 (delta 3), reused 14 (delta 3), pack-reused 0
>> Receiving objects: 100% (14/14), done.
>> Resolving deltas: 100% (3/3), done.
>> warning: remote HEAD refers to nonexistent ref, unable to checkout.

Perhaps here the warning message could include the value of the ref provided 
by the remote's HEAD which would then more clearly indicate to the user what 
was expected.

I haven't had chance to look at how easy that maybe in the code - perhaps a 
bit of low hanging fruit for someone?

>
> So you have MASTER but not master, but your HEAD still is pointing
> at non-existing master.  As HEAD is the way the remote tells the
> clone what the default branch to be checked out is, the command
> reports "we cannot do a checkout of the default branch."
>
--
Philip