Subject: Re: Git clone - head not pointing to master

From: Jakub Narebski <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2011 10:45:53 -0800 (PST)

Vibin Nair <[email-masked]> writes:

> 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.

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

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

> 2. Is there any way to safely merge "user1" to "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).
-- 
Jakub Narebski