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

Jeff King [off-list ref] writes:

I thought the concern wasn't confusion at the error message, but rather
"how do I start a new repository with a branch named something besides
'master'?"

You would expect:

  git init
  git checkout -b foo

to work, but it doesn't. And there's no easy way to do what you want
(you have to resort to plumbing to put the value in HEAD). So the issue
is not a bad error message or a confusing situation, but that the user
wants to accomplish X, and we don't provide a reasonable way to do it.

I think the right interface for "I want to use 'foo' instead of 'master'
like everybody else" would be:

	$ git init --some-option foo

I wouldn't have any issue with that.