Re: Cloning empty repositories, was Re: What is the idea for bare repositories?

[Brian Gernhardt <benji@silverinsanity.com>]

On Nov 13, 2007, at 5:50 AM, Matthieu Moy wrote:

> While clone normally does a bit more:
>
> [remote "origin"]
>        url = /tmp/git1/.git
>        fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*
> [branch "master"]
>        remote = origin
>        merge = refs/heads/master

But how is clone expected to do that when the origin is an empty  
repo?  There is no branch for it to track, and automagically setting  
it to master is bogus because then it's tracking something that  
doesn't exist.

The easy way to set up the last bit is "git checkout -b master --track  
origin/master".  But that won't work if origin/master doesn't exist.   
The following will always work:

git config branch.master.remote origin
git config branch.master.merge refs/heads/master

But asking git-clone do do this sort of odd magic for an empty repo is  
dubious at best.  Perhaps convenient for your situation, but creates  
repos that don't actually work.  (Will give errors when trying to  
merge a non-existent branch, at the very least.)

~~ Brian