Re: [Discuss] soften warning message after cloning "void"

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Feb 19, 2015, 00:25 UTC
Message-ID: <CAPc5daUzdiS0HkVbqZvQvSm_49FhQj++hicmDTb717Cd7hg8hA@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <CAGZ79kYu1k=iKRWTxVD9Q=C9F5J0d653czeR0NCy04wGobB=Vw@mail.gmail.com>

On Wed, Feb 18, 2015 at 4:13 PM, Stefan Beller <sbeller@google.com> wrote:

Show 16 quoted lines

>> +               warning(_("remote HEAD refers to nonexistent ref; "
>> +                         "leaving the current branch unborn.\n"));
>
> Personally I find that more confusing, because I have an idea of
> what checkout may refer to. The notion of an unborn branch is not
> clear to me.
> Maybe
>
>> -               warning(_("remote HEAD refers to nonexistent ref, "
>> -                         "unable to checkout.\n"));
>> +               warning(_("remote HEAD refers to nonexistent ref; "
>> +                         "Checking out $branch instead.\n"));
>
> with $branch being master in the example above. I'd have no idea
> how to come up with a good heuristic which branch to checkout.
> (It would need to match current behavior)

Checking out a random branch is absolutely the worst thing you can do. Personally, I would think that the best thing you can do is to educate your users not to clone from a void. Create some history that is worth sharing, and then push into an empty repository.