Re: Friendly refspecs

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Apr 16, 2008, 03:48 UTC
Message-ID: <20080416034823.GA11727@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <20080413093102.GC12107@mithlond.arda.local>

On Sun, Apr 13, 2008 at 12:31:02PM +0300, Teemu Likonen wrote:

Show 14 quoted lines

> There is still one thing (at least) that I don't quite understand. It's
> about "git push". When I do
> 
>   $ git push <remote> <branch>
> 
> the refs/heads/<branch> is updated or created on the remote side. But if
> I do
> 
>   $ git push <remote> <branch1>:<branch2>
> 
> the refs/heads/<branch2> is not automatically created. Why there is need
> to say "<branch1>:refs/heads/<branch2>" to make it work if <branch2>
> does not exist? The 'git push' manual says something vague about branch
> not matching (?). What does it mean?

This happens because "git push <remote> <branch>" is expanded locally to "git push <remote> <branch>:<branch>", but <branch> is first expanded into refs/heads/<branch>.

The latter uses the explicit refspec <branch2> which doesn't get expanded, since it doesn't exist at all, and so we can't deduce the type (e.g., refs/heads versus refs/tags).

ISTR some discussion in the past few months about using the type of <branch1> to guess the type of <branch2>, but it seems not to have gone anywhere.

Daniel, were you working on this?

-Peff