Re: Terminology question about remote branches.

From: Sean <seanlkml@sympatico.ca>
Date: Aug 4, 2007, 14:48 UTC
Message-ID: <20070804104851.162d7e00.seanlkml@sympatico.ca>
In-Reply-To: <85ejijgzzg.fsf@lola.goethe.zz>

On Sat, 04 Aug 2007 16:01:55 +0200 David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> wrote:

> So --track does not set up a tracking branch, but makes a local
> _following_ branch _refer_ to a tracking branch.

Sure, that's one way to describe it; perhaps it would be best if we switched to that nomenclature in the documentation.

Show 5 quoted lines

> What happens with
> 
>     git checkout origin/branchX
>     git branch --track mylocalbranch
>     git checkout mylocalbranch

This is easy to test, and the answer is that no tracking is set up. You must supply the remote-tracking-branch on the command line with the --track option to git branch. Actually I realized that with a new enough version of Git, --track is implied.

Show 6 quoted lines

> ?  What if after the checkout (which leads to a detached head) I check
> in a few things, and then decide to name the branch and set it up as
> following a remote tracking branch?  Instead of using git-branch for
> setting up the following, do I have to explicitly add the respective
> "remote" line (which does not specify a remote, but a remote tracking
> branch) into, uh, where?

It's not a problem, you could just add an appropriate [branch...] section in your .git/config. Actually looking at a typical branch section is even more confusing to me:

    $ git branch fudge origin/fix1

adds this to the .git/config:

    [branch "fudge"]
        remote = origin
        merge = refs/heads/fix1

The config file does not record the remote-tracking-branch, instead it explicitly records the remote repository information. So it sure appears that if you add the --track option, it _does_ make the local branch track a remote directly. Thus it's hard to call it anything but what you labelled it, a local tracking-branch.

While I thought i had a handle on this, i'm now officially more confused than you; hopefully someone with knowledge of the guts of Git will speak up. Junio Help!

Sean