Re: [PATCH] builtin-branch: highlight current remote branches with an asterisk

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Feb 10, 2009, 11:19 UTC
Message-ID: <20090210111907.GD12089@coredump.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <20090210075214.GC1320@atjola.homenet>

[let me answer your email in reverse order, which will hopefully make more sense when reading]

On Tue, Feb 10, 2009 at 08:52:14AM +0100, Björn Steinbrink wrote:

> still don't really see what I'd use it for. From what I've heard, some
> people just consider origin/HEAD a clone artifact without much use, and
> so far, I think I agree. But maybe there's more to it?

The ref "origin" will resolve to "refs/remotes/origin/HEAD", if it exists. So you can use it as a shorthand for "origin/master" (or whatever branch is most interesting to you on the remote).

> If the <name>/HEAD symref would be created for all remotes and would get
> updated, that would at least make the marker more meaningful, but I

It has been noted in the past that it should _not_ be automatically updated, since it is really about "what is the user's preference for the 'most interesting' branch in this remote". And we don't want to overwrite some preference that they specified.

So I think it makes sense to:

  - if it doesn't exist, set it up based on the remote's HEAD. Clone
    already does this, but "git remote add -f" should probably do it,
    too. I'm not sure if every fetch should do it.

  - give the user some nice interface (probably via "git remote") to
    move the pointer around (right now, it is "git symbolic-ref
    refs/remotes/$remote/HEAD refs/remotes/$remote/$branch").

  - give the user some nice interface to re-fetch the remote HEAD and
    update refs/remotes/$remote/HEAD with it. Probably as an option to
    the "git remote" invocation above.

-Peff