[LUDOC-212] git pull alternates between origin/HEAD and origin/master

• Type: Bug
• Resolution: Fixed
• Priority: Major
• Environment: Running git version 1.8.0 on SLED 11 SP2.
• Severity: 3
• Assignee: Richard Henwood (Inactive)
• Reporter: Ryan Haasken

Description

In my local copy of the Lustre manual git repository, 'git pull' alternates between pulling origin/HEAD and origin/master, and causes merge conflicts.

Here is the output and the steps to reproduce the problem:

haasken@lnx-haasken whamcloud $ git clone git://git.whamcloud.com/doc/manual lustre-manual
Cloning into 'lustre-manual'...
remote: Counting objects: 1387, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (603/603), done.
remote: Total 1387 (delta 990), reused 1156 (delta 781)
Receiving objects: 100% (1387/1387), 1.30 MiB | 593 KiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (990/990), done.
haasken@lnx-haasken whamcloud $ cd lustre-manual/
haasken@lnx-haasken lustre-manual $ git status
# On branch master
nothing to commit, working directory clean
haasken@lnx-haasken lustre-manual $ git pull
From git://git.whamcloud.com/doc/manual
 + e405045...5b5e7eb HEAD       -> origin/HEAD  (forced update)
Already up-to-date.
haasken@lnx-haasken lustre-manual $ git status
# On branch master
# Your branch and 'origin/master' have diverged,
# and have 69 and 1 different commit each, respectively.
#
nothing to commit, working directory clean
haasken@lnx-haasken lustre-manual $ git pull
From git://git.whamcloud.com/doc/manual
 + 5b5e7eb...e405045 master     -> origin/master  (forced update)
Already up-to-date.
haasken@lnx-haasken lustre-manual $ git status
# On branch master
nothing to commit, working directory clean

The git pull will continue alternating between origin/master and origin/HEAD. Note the "69 and 1 different commit each" message reported by git status. This looks similar to the issue reported in this stack overflow question: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7900471/git-pull-alternates-between-two-different-origin-master-branches

Please look into what is causing this and fix it. This is interfering with my work. I am not sure whether origin/master or origin/HEAD is correct.