Re: Git branch bug

From: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Date: May 5, 2007, 17:54 UTC
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0705051954130.4015@racer.site>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0705051942550.14963@bianca.dialin.t-online.de>

Hi,

On Sat, 5 May 2007, Guido Ostkamp wrote:

Show 18 quoted lines

> > On Sat, 5 May 2007, Guido Ostkamp wrote:
> > 
> > > $ mkdir test
> > > $ cd test
> > > $ git init
> > > Initialized empty Git repository in .git/
> > > $ git branch experimental
> > > fatal: Not a valid object name: 'master'.
> > > 
> > > So, it seems it is not possible to create a named branch on an empty
> > > repository.
> > 
> > Actually, it is not possible to branch from a non-existing branch. So,
> > this is somewhat expected from my POV.
> 
> From a git beginners point of view, I would expect that the 'master' 
> branch is automatically created when performing the 'git init'. Why is 
> this not the case?

Well, one side of the branch _is_ created. But you have to provide initial content, to make it a proper branch, from which you can actually branch off.

Having said that, and having read Daniels mail, I agree that this behaviour should be changed, along with the behaviour of "git checkout -b <branch>" in a fresh repo.

It might be the illogical thing, to allow branching of a yet-to-be-initialised branch, but it does not hurt either.

Ciao, Dscho