Re: [PATCH 0/9] Allow overriding the default name of the default branch

From: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Date: Jun 23, 2020, 20:28 UTC
Message-ID: <nycvar.QRO.7.76.6.2006232214030.54@tvgsbejvaqbjf.bet>
In-Reply-To: <20200616142423.GA667151@coredump.intra.peff.net>

Hi Peff & Ævar,

On Tue, 16 Jun 2020, Jeff King wrote:

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> On Tue, Jun 16, 2020 at 10:09:32AM -0400, Jeff King wrote:
>
> > I think with that, we could ditch core.mainBranch entirely, with no
> > notion at all of "this branch is special in this repo". We use HEAD
> > where appropriate, and otherwise avoid any specialness.
>
> One obvious exception is that third-party tools may want to know the
> "special" branch for some reason. But I'm inclined to say that they
> should (in this order):
>
>   - consider whether they really need a special branch at all, or if the
>     mechanism can be made more generic
>
>   - consider whether HEAD is the best value for a special branch (e.g.,
>     GitHub pull requests default to targeting HEAD)

Indeed, this is applicable in many circumstances. For example, instead of https://github.com/git/git/blob/master/README.md it is just as easy (and more robust) to write https://github.com/git/git/blob/HEAD/README.md.

The same goes for `git ls-remote origin HEAD` and as a consequence, `git fetch origin HEAD`: it fetches the default branch of the remote repository.

And with that, I could imagine that this is not actually necessary:

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>   - rely on per-tool config for what's special (because it really may
>     vary between tools, and that's more flexible anyway)
>
> But I'm open to hearing about cases where some tool really wants to know
> "what did the user consider the special branch at the time of creation".

I cannot think of any use cases, apart from essentially creating a new repository, where a tool or a user would want to know of such a preference.

Ciao, Dscho