Re: Minor annoyance with git push

From: Steffen Prohaska <prohaska@zib.de>
Date: Feb 9, 2008, 11:22 UTC
Message-ID: <0456DF67-E0CB-4048-BB19-397D0C559F23@zib.de>
In-Reply-To: <20080209024636.GE2572@coredump.intra.peff.net>

On Feb 9, 2008, at 3:46 AM, Jeff King wrote:

Show 20 quoted lines

>>> Another way to "solve" this issue, of course, is to use the  
>>> remote layout.
>>> I did the switchover myself some time ago; it was hard at first,  
>>> since I
>>> was so used to just check out the branches I just fetched.  But  
>>> in the
>>> long run the distinction between local and tracking branches made  
>>> life
>>> much easier for me.
>>
>> What do you mean with "the remote layout"? I am using
>> "remotes"+tracking branches as far as I can tell...
>
> I think he means something like "if I have 'next' and 'origin/next',
> then I should check whether 'next' is a subset of 'origin/next'" and
> just say "nothing to send." But that suffers from the same "silently
> ignoring rewinds" as above. You could ignore the push if you have
> next exactly equal to origin/next, but that implies that you  
> haven't done
> any fetching (which is unlikely in the scenario you described).

A similar proposal was discussed last October/November and we already had patches. We decided against it. The reason is that the post-condition of "git push" is that all heads that are considered by the push shall be identical locally and at the remote. If "git push" does not achieve this it should report the branches for which the post-condition is not met.

I think Dscho means: do not duplicate remote branches as local branches. Keep the number of local branches as low as possible. Only if you want to work on a remote branch, create a local branch, commit you work, push, and *delete* the local branch.

However, I often use local branches as a reminder which remote branches I am actively monitoring. If I start to work on them I first review what's new with "gitk origin/topic --not topic" and then do the fast forward "git push . origin/topic:topic" before I actually start working "git checkout topic". For these branches, Dschos proposal does not work for me.

	Steffen