Ricardo Wurmus writes:
> Importing https://github.com/immunogenomics/scpost with the CRAN > importer fails, because the git repository does not have an > origin/master branch. This repository only has a “main” branch. > > Arguably, this shouldn’t matter, but (guix git) has the “master” name > set up as the default. When cloning a repository it may be better to > fetch everything and select the default branch — whichever name it may > have. One option may be to use the remote HEAD symref. That's probably the best indicator of what the primary branch is. In a clone, it doesn't necessarily match HEAD on the remote, because users may change it to another branch they're interested in, but that isn't really relevant to these behind-the-scenes checkouts. Here's a quick and dirty demo that makes your reproducer work. A real patch in this direction would of course look very different. diff --git a/guix/git.scm b/guix/git.scm index ca77b9f54b..7320c0d6c8 100644 --- a/guix/git.scm +++ b/guix/git.scm @@ -207,6 +207,9 @@ (define (resolve-reference repository ref) (let ((oid (reference-target (branch-lookup repository branch BRANCH-REMOTE)))) (object-lookup repository oid))) + (('symref . symref) + (let ((oid (reference-name->oid repository symref))) + (object-lookup repository oid))) (('commit . commit) (let ((len (string-length commit))) ;; 'object-lookup-prefix' appeared in Guile-Git in Mar. 2018, so we @@ -320,7 +323,7 @@ (define (reference-available? repository ref) (define* (update-cached-checkout url #:key - (ref '(branch . "master")) + (ref '(symref . "refs/remotes/origin/HEAD")) recursive? (check-out? #t) starting-commit @@ -395,7 +398,7 @@ (define* (latest-repository-commit store url (log-port (%make-void-port "w")) (cache-directory (%repository-cache-directory)) - (ref '(branch . "master"))) + (ref '(symref . "refs/remotes/origin/HEAD"))) "Return two values: the content of the git repository at URL copied into a store directory and the sha1 of the top level commit in this directory. The reference to be checkout, once the repository is fetched, is specified by REF.
