[PATCH 0/5] branch: Fix --track on a remote-tracking non-branch

Hi,

Per Cederqvist alerted me to a change in v1.8.3.2 that broke his build/test infrastructure. Specifically, before 41c21f2 (branch.c: Validate tracking branches with refspecs instead of refs/remotes/*) Git allowed a local branch to --track anything within refs/remotes/*, and in 41c21f2, I changed the rules to require a configured remote with a matching fetch refspec when setting up the upstream configuration variables (so that there was no ambiguity on how to set branch.<name>.remote and branch.<name>.merge).

So far so good.

However, in addition to requiring a matching remote/refspec, I also (for reasons that are still unclear to me) added a requirement that the resulting remote ref name (to be stored into branch.<name>.merge) must start with "refs/heads/" (see the last line of branch.c:check_tracking_branch()).

Although it is typically the case that an upstream branch is a proper (refs/heads/*) branch in the remote repo (which explains why we have not noticed this until now), I think it is _wrong_ of Git to _require_ this when configuring the upstream.

Per's setup that triggered this series is described in more detail in patch #4/5 (which introduces a testcase illustrating the breakage), and the actual fix (which simply removes the extra refs/heads/* requirement on the remote ref) is in patch #5/5.

The two first patches are unrelated trivial fixes that I encountered while working on this, and patch #3 is a small documentation update suggested by Per.

...Johan

Johan Herland (4):
  t2024: Fix inconsequential typos
  t3200: Minor fix when preparing for tracking failure
  Refer to branch.<name>.remote/merge when documenting --track
  t3200: Add test demonstrating minor regression in 41c21f2

Per Cederqvist (1):
  branch.c: Relax unnecessary requirement on upstream's remote ref name

 Documentation/git-branch.txt |  6 ++++--
 branch.c                     |  3 +--
 t/t2024-checkout-dwim.sh     |  4 ++--
 t/t3200-branch.sh            | 37 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++-
 4 files changed, 43 insertions(+), 7 deletions(-)

-- 1.8.3.GIT