tree 2a7301f8e80620a8a552ace52d535d87901dd11d
parent 4d04658d8b5c72d2ebbb3aec7b06228e2ae1d327
author Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de> 1593009990 +0000
committer Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> 1593015261 -0700

submodule: fall back to remote's HEAD for missing remote.<name>.branch

When `remote.<name>.branch` is not configured, `git submodule update`
currently falls back to using the branch name `master`. A much better
idea, however, is to use the remote `HEAD`: on all Git servers running
reasonably recent Git versions, the symref `HEAD` points to the main
branch.

Note: t7419 demonstrates that there _might_ be use cases out there that
_expect_ `git submodule update --remote` to update submodules to the
remote `master` branch even if the remote `HEAD` points to another
branch. Arguably, this patch makes the behavior more intuitive, but
there is a slight possibility that this might cause regressions in
obscure setups.

Even so, it should be okay to fix this behavior without anything like a
longer transition period:

- The `git submodule update --remote` command is not really common.

- Current Git's behavior when running this command is outright
  confusing, unless the remote repository's current branch _is_ `master`
  (in which case the proposed behavior matches the old behavior).

- If a user encounters a regression due to the changed behavior, the fix
  is actually trivial: setting `submodule.<name>.branch` to `master`
  will reinstate the old behavior.

Helped-by: Philippe Blain <levraiphilippeblain@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>