Re: git init doesn't create master branch

From: Ramkumar Ramachandra <artagnon@gmail.com>
Date: May 29, 2013, 13:20 UTC
Message-ID: <CALkWK0nLJn2EDy9KO+Qp3sHhxgyKQag-575srq5ztuu5LgsmyA@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <51A5FC17.8000608@intland.com>

"Ákos, Tajti" wrote:

Show 7 quoted lines

> "Cannot merge multiple branches into empty head"
>
> The command was:
>
> git pull ../dump.dmp refs/heads/*:refs/heads/*
>
> Is this a better way of doing this?

pull runs a fetch, which updated .git/FETCH_HEAD. Now, if .git/FETCH_HEAD has just one branch (and other not-for-merge entries), there's no problem. We just run update-ref HEAD, and get it to point to the sole branch that was fetched. If your fetch fetches multiple branches, and you have a real branch (not "unborn") with branch.<name>.merge set, we know which one of those branches to merge in.

Now, what you have is a fetch which fetches multiple branches, and you're trying to merge that into a non-existent HEAD (or unborn branch). There is ambiguity and arguably no "right" thing to do, which is why git complains. I'm not sure if it's possible to argue differently and patch git-pull.sh for your usecase.

There are many possible solutions to the problem, depending on what you want. The simplest I can suggest is: ignore the error for that command and run git reset --hard.