Git clone - head not pointing to master

Hi,
  I am a Git beginner. Recently i started working on a codebase (that is 
checked in to a git repository) of our client, who is not very aware 
about how git works.
The repository has multiple branches such as

origin/user1 origin/master origin/user2

Now when i take a clone of this repository : git clone <repo-url>, a clone of the repo is created on my machine.

But when i do a : "git branch" it shows

user1 *

which means that the "head" is pointing to the "user1" branch.

The client told me that all the recent code were being merged into the "master" branch and hence the "user1" branch has code which is older than "master" branch.

I had 2 queries :

1. Is it possible to make the "head" of the remote point to "master" 
instead of "user1", so that other members of my team get the latest code 
when they try to clone the repository.
2. Is there any way to safely merge "user1" to "master".

On Fri, 30 Dec 2011 16:52:57 +0530 Vibin Nair <vibin@volitionlabs.com> wrote:

`git clone` checks out the branch which the HEAD ref in the remote repo points to. You can use `git symbolic-ref` to retarget HEAD if it's a bare repository. If the repository is non-bare HEAD tracks what's checked out, so it can be changed by doing `git checkout`. Note that you can pass the "-b <branch>" command-line option to `git clone` to make it create a local tracking branch and check it out for an arbitrary remote branch <branch>.

This question has little sense because it heavily depends on what you mean by "safely". The correct way to state a question like this is to think whether merging user1 to master has sense from the project's development standpoint.

Vibin Nair <vibin@volitionlabs.com> writes:

Where do you do "git branch"?  In clone or in original repository?
 

If you want "origin/HEAD" to point to "origin/master" remote-tracking branch, so that "origin" as a branch means "origin/master", you can use (with modern Git)

  clone$ git remote set-head origin master

or

  clone$ git remote set-head origin

if "master" is now current branch on remote.

If you want to change HEAD i.e. current branch on server (on remote), you can use

  server$ git checkout master

if it is non-bare repository (not recommended setup), or

  server$ git symbolic-ref HEAD refs/heads/master

or equivalently

  server$ git update-ref --no-deref HEAD refs/heads/master

You can check if 'user1' can be fast-forwarded to 'master' with

  $ git checkout user1
  $ git merge --ff-only master

This would update 'user1' to 'master', but only if 'master' is just straight advancement of 'user1'.

HTH (Hope That Helps).