Here's some more #leftoverbits where we have a clone/fetch feature discrepancy and where clone is magical in ways that "fetch" isn't.
If you make an initial commit and push to a remote repo "origin", you don't get a remote origin/HEAD reference, and a "fetch" won't create it either. You will get it if you subseuqently "clone" the repo, but not if you use "git init / remote add / fetch / git checkout -t" which should otherwise be equivalent. If you push to "master" (or whatever HEAD is) from the clone the origin/HEAD will be updated accordingly, but from the repo you pushed from & the one you did init+fetch instead of clone you'll never see it. Some code spelunking reveals remote_head_points_at, guess_remote_head() etc. in builtin/clone.c. I.e. this is special-cased as part of the "clone". Can anyone thing of a reason for why this shouldn't be fixed as a bug? I've tried searching the archives but "origin/HEAD" comes up with too many results. https://public-inbox.org/git/alpine.lsu.1.00.0803020556380.22...@racer.site/#t seems to be the patch that initially added it, but it is not discussed why this should be a clone-only special case that doesn't apply to "fetch".
