# git pull fails with http urls?

2 messages from 2007-09-04 to 2007-09-04. Participants: Richard Purdie, Junio C Hamano.
Thread: https://gitlist.dev/t/9776

## Richard Purdie, 2007-09-04 14:10

Subject: git pull fails with http urls?
Message-ID: <1188915053.5705.12.camel@localhost.localdomain>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/1188915053.5705.12.camel%40localhost.localdomain

```
I've noticed a problem with pulling http urls. I can clone them fine:

  git clone http://www.gnome.org/~alexl/git/gio.git/

and I can pull with:

  git pull

which works as expected however if I try:

  git pull http://www.gnome.org/~alexl/git/gio.git/

it fails with:

  error: pick-rref: HEAD not found
  No such ref HEAD at http://www.gnome.org/~alexl/git/gio.git/

The HEAD file is there at http://www.gnome.org/~alexl/git/gio.git/HEAD
and:

  git pull http://www.gnome.org/~alexl/git/gio.git/ master

works. It seems git just doesn't want to see/understand the HEAD file?

Is the above supposed to work or is something wrong with the above
commands? I see this with git 1.5.2.3 and 1.5.3, google suggests this
might have worked with 1.4.x and broke in 1.5...

Regards,

Richard

```

## Junio C Hamano, 2007-09-04 19:17

Subject: Re: git pull fails with http urls?
Message-ID: <7vsl5umea5.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/7vsl5umea5.fsf%40gitster.siamese.dyndns.org
In-Reply-To: <1188915053.5705.12.camel@localhost.localdomain>

```
Pasky seems to have a locally modified version at repo.or.cz to
add HEAD to the result of update-server-info, but as far as I
can see, update-server-info never placed HEAD in the result, and
I do not think ls-remote compensated it by adding HEAD by hand,
so that change is fixing the symptom rather than fixing the
regression, but I am not sure where the true regression is.
Most likely we broke git-fetch while trying to deal with
repositories with insanely large number of refs (aka
"fetch--tool partial rewrite in C").

Having said all that, I think it is a good idea nevertheless to
add HEAD information across all transports, like Pasky's patch
does.  Currently http/ftp/rsync do not report HEAD while git
native protocols do.

Pasky, care to submit "server-info: Add HEAD to info/refs" for
inclusion?

```