partial globbing in fetch refspecs broken in v1.5.5

From: Nikolaus Schulz <microschulz@web.de>
Date: May 16, 2008, 21:28 UTC
Message-ID: <20080516212833.GA5366@penelope.zusammrottung.local>

Hi,

the new refspec parser in v1.5.5 has also broken fetch uses like

    git fetch <url> +refs/heads/<foo>*:refs/remotes/<bar>*.

Such a refspec works like a charm with git 1.5.4. In case the usefulness of such a refspec isn't obvious, here's my use case. I want to track several remotes, and in particular a selection of branches from one remote repository, which has the following branches[1]:

  HEAD
  candidate
  candidate+patches
  debian-experimental
  debian-sarge
  debian-sid
  maint
  master
  release
  release+patches

With git 1.5.4, I can add the following to .git/config

[remote "debian"]
        url = http://smarden.org/git/git.git
        fetch = +refs/heads/debian-*:refs/remotes/debian/*

...and it will work just like '%'-style pattern matching in Makefiles, e.g. the remote branch debian-sid becomes remotes/debian/sid. I find that very natural; but git v1.5.5 rejects this refspec as invalid.

I am just a beginner with git, and I do not know if there is any problem with such a use of refspecs. But if not, I would like to beg the maintainers to consider restoring this functionality.

Nikolaus