From: Andrew Ardill Date: Mon, 06 Feb 2012 04:42:24 GMT Subject: Re: Bug: "git checkout -b" should be allowed in empty repo Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <20120206043012.GD29365@sigill.intra.peff.net> On 6 February 2012 15:30, Jeff King wrote: > And perhaps in that case we should be discouraging them from calling it > something besides master (because while master is mostly convention, > there are a few magic spots in the code where it is treated specially, > and departing from the convention for no good reason should be > discouraged). What exactly are the areas where 'master' is treated specially? I agree that people should be discouraged from needlessly abandoning convention, however I think users should have the ability to name their branches as they see fit. If I am forced to abandon code targeted at the 'master' naming convention in order to use my desired naming convention, we should fix that. Additionally, if I have to either manually set a branch name with plumbing commands, or delete existing branches that are generated automatically with no option not to generate them, we should improve the porcelain to cover these cracks. In general, I think it plausible that in some use cases the term 'master' might be misleading or inappropriate and users should not be punished for that. Regards, Andrew Ardill