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

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Feb 10, 2009, 11:59 UTC
Message-ID: <20090210115943.GA15387@coredump.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <20090210115036.GG1320@atjola.homenet>

On Tue, Feb 10, 2009 at 12:50:36PM +0100, Björn Steinbrink wrote:

Show 6 quoted lines

> Yeah, that's what I meant when I said "short-shortname". Maybe it's just
> me, but I really can't see myself using that. Would be likely that
> "origin" references something else than what I expect, especially when
> switching from one repo to another. And doing "git branch -r" to find
> out if "origin" is the right thing is slower than just typing the full
> shortname right away. Well, just my 2 cents.

Hmm. I use it all the time. :) I find it especially useful in one project where everybody has a personal repo with one interesting branch, and I am the integration manager. I use "git remote update' to fetch from everybody, and then I can diff and pull against them just by naming their remote.

So I think it is just one of those features that some people find useful and others don't.

> Yeah, as I said in the other mail, having it as a default would make add
> -m quite pointless.

Not necessarily. You might be interested in some other branch that isn't their HEAD. So yes, you would hopefully be using it much less because we would be guessing what you wanted to put there instead of making you type it. But it would still be useful as an override.

Show 7 quoted lines

> >   - 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.
> 
> FWIW, I would hate fetch for doing that. I dislike the whole
> <remote>/HEAD thing, and wouldn't want fetch to recreate that for me all
> the time.

Yeah, I think that is a good reason not to have fetch do it.

Show 10 quoted lines

> >   - 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").
> 
> Maybe "git remote set-master"? Though I kinda dislike the "master" part
> of the name, which I just took from the -m option to "remote add",
> though. I guess that could increase the confusion about the "master"
> branch as pre-setup by "git init" being special, and might lead to
> interesting conclusions about that command affecting the remote
> repository.

I think somebody suggested "set-default" in another thread, which doesn't quite work either. Perhaps "set-head" is too literal? Maybe "favorite-branch"? :)

-Peff