Re: Bug: "git checkout -b" should be allowed in empty repo

On 6 February 2012 15:30, Jeff King [off-list ref] wrote:

And perhaps in that case we should be discouraging them from calling it
something besides master (because while master is mostly convention,
there are a few magic spots in the code where it is treated specially,
and departing from the convention for no good reason should be
discouraged).

What exactly are the areas where 'master' is treated specially? I
agree that people should be discouraged from needlessly abandoning
convention, however I think users should have the ability to name
their branches as they see fit.

If I am forced to abandon code targeted at the 'master' naming
convention in order to use my desired naming convention, we should fix
that. Additionally, if I have to either manually set a branch name
with plumbing commands, or delete existing branches that are generated
automatically with no option not to generate them, we should improve
the porcelain to cover these cracks.

In general, I think it plausible that in some use cases the term
'master' might be misleading or inappropriate and users should not be
punished for that.

Regards,

Andrew Ardill