From: asymptosis <asymptosis@posteo.net>
Date: Mon, 31 May 2021 04:37:20 GMT
Subject: Re: Bug when cloning a repository with a default branch called HEAD
Message-ID: <YLRoAIBExd+dAe0C@sleipnir.acausal.realm>
In-Reply-To: <07edafe5-d0a2-4a2c-12a2-28c163f6fdda@gmail.com>

>I'm trying to create minimal reproducible test repo by switching 
>initial branch to HEAD:
>
>$ mkdir shark && cd shark
>$ git init
>$ git checkout -b HEAD
>
> /snip
>
>The remote [1] might misconfigured default branch, so instead of 
>master/main it pointed to HEAD, and it caused the issue.

Hi Bagas,

I think he meant the remote had its default branch set to HEAD before he tried cloning. I.e. reproducing the error would look something more like this:

#! /bin/bash
remote_repo=/tmp/remote
local_repo=/tmp/local
mkdir $remote_repo
cd $remote_repo
git init -b HEAD
touch README
git add -A && git commit -m "Initial commit"
cd ..
git clone $remote_repo $local_repo


For me, the generated /tmp/local repo does issue warnings about ambiguous HEAD ref. However, it still works, and I don't get the wild errors like reported by Björn.

I suspect it's something to do with the implementation on the local OS. I'm on Linux and it seems like Björn is using Windows.