sounds great. I think I realized why I didn't have it. It's not done by `git remote add <origin> https://...` my experiment was `git remote rm origin` and then `git remote add origin ... ; git fetch --all --prune` I think I also tried without the prune option. git version 2.46.1 What I want mostly is for that HEAD ref to always exist. As far as there being ways to configure it, that's all good but I don't want to explain doing that to consumers of my code. I'd rather it just work for them, on clones, and add remotes or fetch if it's missing. I'm not super worried about it being updated as I feel like if that ever happens it's something loudly communicated, and I'm more willing to find it ok to make that an FAQ, if this breaks because that changed you can manually update that. Mostly I'm of the opinion that what I'm doing needs to work in various CI environments out of the box. Thanks for the info, hopefully soon (tm). On Sat, Nov 16, 2024 at 10:02 AM Bence Ferdinandy <bence@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > > On Sat Nov 16, 2024 at 04:36, Jeff King <peff@xxxxxxxx> wrote: > > On Fri, Nov 15, 2024 at 09:34:28AM -0500, Caleb Cushing wrote: > > > >> Context: recently I've been trying to develop a feature for my Gradle > >> plugin that derives a semantic version from git describe. In order to > >> achieve my next level of feature I need the HEAD Branch. Now, I can > >> get this branch using git remote show <remote> and parsing the output. > >> I'm a firm believer that it should be possible for me to write code, > >> long term even, without the internet; I did this once with my job when > >> I needed to go home to my parents who were very rural and didn't have > >> internet; I was able to keep working without access. I want that for > >> anyone that uses this tool. > > > > You should use the refs/remotes/<remote>/HEAD symref instead (or its > > alias, just "<remote>"), which is more convenient and doesn't hit the > > network. Which is exactly what... > > > >> Problem: I don't want to have to do a network request every time I do > >> a build, in fact I'd rather almost never have to do a network request. > >> Gradle makes reducing the network request to less than once per build > >> something ... unsupported. jgit doesn't expose support for fetching > >> this information. Then I found out that you could do `git remote > >> set-head <remote> <branch>` which appears to behave exactly how I'd > >> want and expect. It doesn't easily solve my problem though because I > >> want my solution to be generally applicable. > > > > ...set-head will set. So OK, but... > > > >> Ideal Long-Term Solution: git remote set-head happens automatically on > >> lone, and even fetch if it's not set. Explicit setting would override > >> any automatic setting; and it might be a good idea to automatically > >> unset if the HEAD branch disappears from the remote. > > > > We already do the equivalent of set-head on clone. If you do: > > > > git clone https://github.com/git/git > > cd git > > git symbolic-ref refs/remotes/origin/HEAD > > > > you should see it pointing to "refs/remotes/origin/master" (and like you > > can refer to "origin/HEAD" or "origin" from git-log, etc). Are you not > > seeing that? > > > > We don't update it on fetch. That has been discussed, but there are some > > questions about when it should overwrite what's available locally. E.g. > > this thread: > > > > https://lore.kernel.org/git/D3HBD7C1FR14.74FL1Q1S9UCB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx/ > > That part we already have pinned down: fetch will only update remote/HEAD if it > doesn't already exist. So running "init && remote add && fetch" should end you > up in the same place as "clone" (although fetch will report if the remote has > changed HEAD compared to what you have for transparency). If you _always_ want > to have the latest head you'll need to run "fetch && remote set-head --auto > [remote]" every time. > > Something like > git fetch --all && git remote | xargs -i git remote set-head -a {} > covers everything. > > > > > There have been some patches in that direction but I have not kept up > > with the current state: > > > > https://lore.kernel.org/git/20241023153736.257733-2-bence@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx/ > > There's definitely going to be another round, but I think (hope :)) we're not > very far off from finishing. > > Best, > Bence -- Caleb Cushing Appointments https://calendly.com/caleb-cushing https://xenoterracide.com
