I have looked at the diff between:
(1) the above three topics merged to 'next'; and
(2) this 21-patch series applied to 'master' then merged to 'next'.
There indeed does not seem major changes, but there are some:
- get_head_names() lost "const char *remote_name" parameter that was
unused (good);
- guess_remote_head() uses a local variable "r" instead of using an
additional variable "m" (does not matter);
- "builtin-send-pack.c" lost otherwise unused inclusion of "tag.h"
(good);
- one_local_ref() and get_local_heads() are moved around (does not
matter);
- t5505-remote.sh has one more test (ok).
- The old series had distracting removal of a few blank lines in
cmd_clone() and get_remote_ref_states(), but with this round these are
gone (good).
Overall, the new series certainly looks cleaner.