From: Shawn Pearce Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2011 21:01:08 GMT Subject: Re: remote's HEAD not detected correctly Message-ID: In-Reply-To: On Mon, Feb 28, 2011 at 12:52, Jeffrey Middleton wrote: > > So somehow, the clone misses the fact that origin's HEAD is pu, not > master, and git remote is only partially aware of this. It looks like > this only happens when the two branches in question are pointing to > the same commit; perhaps git is trying to guess what HEAD is via the > SHA1? I know that ls-remote prints an SHA1, not a refname, for HEAD - > is it not actually possible to get that information through a general > transport protocol? Right. The transport protocol doesn't expose the name that a symbolic reference points to, only its current value. Thus clients are forced to guess by looking for another reference whose current SHA-1 is the same. If there is more than one, its taking a best guess. There have been a few attempts to expand the protocol and include the current symbolic reference target name, but thus far it hasn't gotten much beyond the idea stage. -- Shawn.