Re: Local clone checks out wrong branch based on remote HEAD

Jeff King venit, vidit, dixit 18.03.2009 01:54:

On Tue, Mar 17, 2009 at 12:19:35PM -0700, Tom Preston-Werner wrote:

quoted

After cloning this with a standard `git clone`, the refs are:

[11:48][tom@solid:~/dev/sandbox/site(release)]$ git branch -r -v
  origin/HEAD    a52528a Fixed some routing problems
  origin/release a52528a Fixed some routing problems
  origin/trunk   a52528a Fixed some routing problems

And the checked out branch is 'release' instead of 'trunk' as I would expect:

As others have explained, this is because the information is lacking at
the client and we are forced to make a guess. There is a heuristic in
the guess to prefer "master" if it is an option. I suppose we could make
a similar exception for "trunk", which might make sense to people
working with SVN repositories.

OTOH, I am not sure I want to open the can of worms that is writing an
exhaustive list of heuristics that will work for everybody. Fixing the
protocol itself would probably be easier. :)

One might even argue that in case of ambiguities, checking out a
detached head would be most appropriate. Really, why impose creation of
certain local branches on a user at all, unless asked for? Detached
heads are natural in git! But I don't really expect positive consensus
on that one...

Michael