Why is “origin/HEAD” shown when running “git branch -r”?

Question

When you run git branch -r why the blazes does it list origin/HEAD? For example, there\'s a remote repo on GitHub, say, with two branches: master a

Answer 1

There's always a HEAD that points to the currently checked out branch on the remote repo (which may or may not be master). Even remote repositories have current branches. Usually it is master, and off the top of my head I can't think of any reason why one would want to change it, but it can be changed.