From: Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net>
Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 18:13:15 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Disable USE_SYMLINK_HEAD by default
Message-ID: <7v4q6dn5j8.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net>
In-Reply-To: <1132075295.25640.59.camel@dv>

Pavel Roskin <proski@gnu.org> writes:

> On Tue, 2005-11-15 at 09:05 -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:
>> Petr Baudis <pasky@suse.cz> writes:
>> 
>> > Yes, I would very much like to have this. I still want to go
>> > symrefs-only for public repositories created for cg-admin-setuprepo, so
>> > that fetching over HTTP works properly.
>> 
>> Sorry, I must have missed that part.  How does fetch-over-HTTP
>> break with symlinked HEAD?
>
> With symlinks, cogito doesn't know which branch it is fetching if the
> branch is not explicitly specified.

Ah, thanks.

git-clone-pack has the same problem.  It basically "guesses" by:

	- If the master branch exists, and the object name of
          the branch tip matches the object name of HEAD, assume
          HEAD points at master.  Even when there are other
          branches that happen to share the same branch head.

	- Otherwise, if there is a branch whose tip matches the
          object name of HEAD, assume HEAD points at it.  It
          just picks "one-of-them" if more than one branches
          match.

	- If there is no branch that matches HEAD, issue a
          warning and create HEAD that records the object name,
          not pointing anywhere.

To solve this generally we would need to extend what ls-remote
returns, I suppose.