Re: [PATCH 5/6 (v2)] upload-pack: send the HEAD information

[Jeff King <peff@peff.net>]

On Mon, Dec 01, 2008 at 06:20:52PM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:

> I think sending 0{40} would break older clients, but older clients cannot
> clone from an empty repository anyway, so that should not be so bad.  I
> however do not think it is such a big thing to be able to clone void
> anyway.
> 
> You just have to train yourself to announce that your repository is
> clonable _after_ making it actually clonable.

I disagree. 99% of the time we see people complain about this, it is not
"I tried to announce my repo to people but it didn't have any commits"
but rather "why must I hack, init remote, then push, instead of init
remote, hack, push"[1].

That is, some segment of people (myself included) want to say first "I'm
starting a new project, and so I'm going to create a spot for it on my
server". Of course we can train ourselves to do it in the other order,
but it is an unnecessary complication.

-Peff

[1] Actually, it is more than just arbitrary preference. It is less
typing to do:

    ssh remote 'mkdir foo && cd foo && git init --bare'
    git clone remote:foo
    hack hack hack; commit
    git push

than

    git init
    hack hack hack; commit
    ssh remote 'mkdir foo && cd foo && git init --bare'
    git push
    git remote add -m refs/heads/master origin remote:foo