Hello Git community! Imagine a repository initialised using git init. Then, a remote (e.g., origin) is added. Now, I want to fetch all branches, tags and commits from the prepared remote to fill the local repository up for the first time and do it as quick as possible. I want the origin/HEAD reference to be fetched as well, and this is where the problem is - I don't know how to do it optimally. To summarise it, I want the following: * Prepare a repository as quick as possible * No local branches in the repository * No files in working tree after downloading * Working tree must be available (for further checkouts) * Keep the information about its default branch (origin/HEAD) * Updates can be fetched using a git fetch (ideally a plain one) * The repository will not be ever used for pushing (it does not have to be disabled) Three sub-optimal solutions I have considered: 1) `git fetch origin && git remote set-head origin -a` 2) `git fetch origin +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/* HEAD:refs/remotes/origin/HEAD` 3) instead of git init and remote, use directly `git clone --no-checkout` The first solution is not suitable due its delay caused by remote access (2 separate invocations). For smaller repositories, delays of these individual commands are almost comparable. However, this solution is semantically exactly what I want. The problem with the second solution is that it will create origin/HEAD as a commit hash, not as a symbolic reference to a branch (e.g., master). When master branch gets updated, it may cause problems with further update fetching using a plain git fetch. Also, this solution doesn't look very familiar and stable. The third solution has several problems. The first one is the created default local branch. So delete it. However, to delete it, I need to checkout another commit and that modifies working tree, which can cause unnecessary delay (namely for bigger repositories) as it may (and will in most cases) be checked out to another commit later. Then I can finally remove the local branch (after getting its name, though). If you wonder which applications I need such restrictions for - I am a developer of GitPack, a very simple Git-based package manager, and I would like to solve the mentioned problem to improve storing downloaded repositories in GitPack cache. It would allow GitPack projects to use a different default branch than master branch, which is currently hard-coded in GitPack. I hope everything is clear. If not, do not hesitate and ask me. I would really appreciate your help. Thank you for all your effort -- Dominik Salvet
