Subject: Is origin/HEAD only being created on clone a bug? #leftoverbits

From: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 May 2018 20:30:40 +0200

Here's some more #leftoverbits where we have a clone/fetch feature
discrepancy and where clone is magical in ways that "fetch" isn't.

If you make an initial commit and push to a remote repo "origin", you
don't get a remote origin/HEAD reference, and a "fetch" won't create it
either.

You will get it if you subseuqently "clone" the repo, but not if you use
"git init / remote add / fetch / git checkout -t" which should otherwise
be equivalent.

If you push to "master" (or whatever HEAD is) from the clone the
origin/HEAD will be updated accordingly, but from the repo you pushed
from & the one you did init+fetch instead of clone you'll never see it.

Some code spelunking reveals remote_head_points_at, guess_remote_head()
etc. in builtin/clone.c. I.e. this is special-cased as part of the
"clone".

Can anyone thing of a reason for why this shouldn't be fixed as a bug?
I've tried searching the archives but "origin/HEAD" comes up with too
many
results. https://public-inbox.org/git/[email-masked]/#t
seems to be the patch that initially added it, but it is not discussed
why this should be a clone-only special case that doesn't apply to
"fetch".