CODEWITHSUNDEEP
gitgit-detached-head
jayunit100
jayunit100

Reputation: 17650

Why is the Git remote/origins/master branch detached?

I have a strange git scenario: I've been developing on master, and ive noticed that when my CI clones down and attempts to modify a git repository, it doesn't see "master" in the refspec. Thus, the command 

git checkout master

Fails. To fix this (as i need my CI to commit some minor updates to master), I tried to do:

git checkout remotes/origin/master

However, that command results in a DETACHED head. The final fix was that, rather than doing a checkout, I do checkout -b like so:

git checkout -b master

Which magically seems to "create" the master branch which (I thought already exists), and then all is right in the world.

My question is, thus: What is the difference between remotes/origin/master and the master created via git checkout -b? Since I only have one remote, I would think they would be synonymous.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 1147

Answers (1)

user456814
user456814

Reputation:

remotes/origin/master is just a remote-tracking branch, it keeps track of which commit the master branch on the remote origin is on. Branches created with git checkout -b <branch> are local branches, not remote-tracking branches. That is the difference.

However, when you clone a repo, a local master is usually created because that is usually the standard default branch from the original repo, unless the original repo is set up to use a different branch name as the default. Perhaps that is why you are able to re-create the master branch locally? You can check by running the following command:

$ git branch -r
  origin/HEAD -> origin/master
  origin/master

In this output, you'll see that origin/HEAD, which represents the default branch on the remote, points to origin/master.

Also, is your CI actually re-cloning the entire repo repeatedly? That seems really inefficient. I think most CI setups would just clone the repo once, and then pull or receive new changes.

Upvotes: 4

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