Question

I’m using gitflow branching model for some projects. For this reason when someone clone a repository I’d like that the default checked out branch would be the develop branch rather than master.

For public projects hosted on Github I can control this using the Admin section for that repository, but for private repository managed with gitolite the only working solution I found is to ssh into the hosting machine and use the git update-ref command directly in the bare repository.

Is there any way to do this remotely, i.e. without the need to ssh into remote machine?

Answer 1

After a couple of hours spent in implementing VonC suggestion I sadly found out that a set-head script already exists in gitolite repository 🙁

However I’ve already implemented my version for that so I’m posting it here. I implemented an additional feature which can restrict the set-head command only to repository creators. Maybe I will fork the gitolite project and add that feature to the original version.

BTW here is my version:

#!/bin/sh

. $(dirname $0)/adc.common-functions

[ $# -eq 2 ] || die "usage: $0 <repo> <branch>"

if [ $SDB_WRITER_ALLOWED ]; then
  # this will check only for write permission on the given repository
  get_rights_and_owner $1 # this also set $repo variable
  [ -z "$perm_write" ] && die "You don't have write permission on $repo"
else
  # require a repository creator to change default branch
  valid_owned_repo $1
fi

# move to repo dir
cd "$GL_REPO_BASE_ABS/$repo.git"

# check for branch existence
match=`git branch | sed 's/^\( \|*\) //' | grep $2`
# this will check for an exact match in branch name  
[ "$2" = "$match" ] || die "Unable to find branch $2 in repository $repo"

# update the default checked out branch
git symbolic-ref HEAD refs/heads/$match   

echo "Head branch for repository $1 updated to $2"

Here it’s the pull request if someone is interested