I still think this is a bad idea to implement. This will add confusion since it doesn't change the actual default branch in the Git repo itself.

since it doesn't change the actual default branch in the Git repo itself

That's in purpose.

The idea/issue is to display the epel7 branch by default on CentOS' dist-git while keeping master in Fedora with both instances being in sync. If we change the default git branch, it will be synced from one instance to the other, thus making either CentOS' default branch be master, or Fedora's be epel7.

@jperrin do you want to shim in about the comment on added confusion?

I know the purpose, I'm just saying it's a bad idea to change the default view this way, because it is misleading to the poor folks who check out the code from the CentOS Dist-Git server.

We never heard back from the stakeholder asking for this feature, so I'm going to close this PR and its associated ticket.

@pingou Just for future reference, in case this is re-opened: this change also needs to account for all the other UI quirks that break when you have a default ref that doesn't exist (new PR creation, commits view, etc.).