When attempting to make packages from a GitHub repository, lit assumes the deprecated "master" branch

[rdw-software]

GitHub has updated all repositories to use main as their default branch name, but lit seems to always want to access master (and subsequently fails to install the package):

I believe this might be the relevant portion of the code:

lit/libs/core.lua

Lines 504 to 505 in 52abe66

	"^github://([^/]+)/([^/@]+)/?@(.+)$", "https://github.com/%1/%2/archive/%3.zip",
	"^github://([^/]+)/([^/]+)/?$", "https://github.com/%1/%2/archive/master.zip",

I think the problematic flow is as follows:

1. CLI input of github://SomeUser/SomeRepository is passed to makeUrl (via commands/make.lua)
2. makeUrl replaces the user and repository name with the above string that hardcodes the master branch
3. makeUrl assigns the makeHttp handler (due to the https;// prefix of the resulting string)
4. The handler fetches the unavailable address and fails with a 404 error
5. Bonus The CLI gets stuck in the event loop instead of exiting (separate issue)

Since people can rename their deployment branch this was never a perfect solution, but now that there are at least the two default branch names to consider it completely breaks down.

Brainstorming ideas for a solution:

• Request both default URLs and hope one of them exists? (not great)
• Fetch whatever is the latest release, via GitHub API? (might be complicated)
• Simply fetch the latest commit (HEAD) instead of a proper release? (seems like a workaround/hack)
• Something else?

[squeek502]

Looks like github://SomeUser/SomeRepository@main should be able to be used to specify the branch.