Re: [PATCH 00/28] Use main as default branch name

From: Philip Oakley <philipoakley@iee.email>
Date: Nov 19, 2020, 10:35 UTC
Message-ID: <7df660f2-ad74-7d1f-eb13-a0edadffbfbf@iee.email>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqh7pmyuzn.fsf@gitster.c.googlers.com>

On 19/11/2020 01:51, Junio C Hamano wrote:

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> Philip Oakley <philipoakley@iee.email> writes:
>
>> An alternative in the other direction is to go with the 'not currently
>> on any branch' (detached at nowhere) but then require users to
>> deliberately create their first branch with their chosen name. This
>> moves the 'backward incompatibility' to a different place, which may be
>> easier to manage.
> As has already been mentioned by Peff, I do not think that is a
> workable alternative, especially given that people are generally
> afraid of and easily get confused by being on a detached HEAD.

Yes, our use of the technical phrase 'detached HEAD' is confusing, compared with the more pleasant 'not on any branch', or 'not at a branch tip'. Such is the curse of knowledge.

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>
> And there is no such thing as unborn detached HEAD.  Existing
> versions of Git would not consider a $GIT_DIR that does not have any
> HEAD, which means a new repository created by such an "initially
> there is no branch" version of Git cannot be accessed by any
> existing versions of Git.

Isn't this, essentially, because there is no 'empty/null commit' that we (HEAD) could start at? There have been a few cases where I've been 'annoyed' that we're missing that. (rather than the orphan branch approach)

>
> It raises the backward incompatibility of such an approach to a
> whole new level that is simply unmanageable, I am afraid.

OK, accepted.

Philip