Re: Regarding Git and Branch Naming

>
> On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 11:33:53AM -0700, Chris Torek wrote:
>
> > On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 10:19 AM Craig H Maynard <chmaynard@me.com> wrote:
> > > Does the git init command really need to create a default branch? Perhaps that step could be left to the user.
> >
> > The HEAD pseudo-ref must exist and must contain a valid OID or
> > branch name.  (If it does not exist, Git says that the directory
> > is not a repository.  Perhaps this test could be weakened, but
> > that's definitely a fairly big change.)
> >
> > In a new, empty repository there are no valid OIDs, so HEAD must
> > contain a branch name.  The branch itself need not exist, but
> > whatever name is in HEAD is the branch that will be created
> > when the user makes the first commit.
>
> We definitely _could_ extend HEAD to allow a "not pointing at anything"
> state. Presumably for reading that would behave like the "pointing at a
> branch that doesn't exist yet" case. But I think the experience it
> creates for writing is not very good. I.e., I think the best we could do
> is something like:
>
>   $ git init
>   $ git add some-files
>   $ git commit -m whatever
>   fatal: HEAD does not point to any branch
>   hint: use "git checkout -b <branch>" to make commits on <branch>
>
> Perhaps that's not _too_ bad, but it feels a bit unfriendly (and
> definitely more likely to cause backwards compatibility issues than
> picking _some_ default name). There would also be a lot of corner cases
> to cover and debug (e.g., "git checkout foo" moving away from the "no
> branch" state should make the usual complaints if we'd have to overwrite
> or modify index and untracked files).
>
> -Peff