Re: remote branches, and branch names in general

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Mar 3, 2009, 16:11 UTC
Message-ID: <20090303161117.GB32079@coredump.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <450196A1AAAE4B42A00A8B27A59278E709F075DF@EXCHANGE.trad.tradestation.com>

On Tue, Mar 03, 2009 at 10:52:21AM -0500, John Dlugosz wrote:

Show 7 quoted lines

> But I wonder if some commands work differently or specifically don't
> look in remotes.  I "learned" to qualify everything when I accidently
> created a local branch named pub/xxx instead of using remotes/pub/xxx
> like I intended.  I don't remember what that was, but I'm guessing
> that maybe refs that are a destination are different, as you are only
> supposed to change your local stuff.  I think that was a "pull"
> command, before I had the automatic argument in the config file.

Yes, the "branch" command deals only with creating things in refs/heads, which are your local branches (similarly, "git tag" will only deal with stuff in refs/tags). So "git branch origin/foo" will make a ref "refs/heads/origin/foo", and "git branch -d origin/foo" will delete "refs/heads/origin/foo", not "refs/remotes/origin/foo".

But when looking up a ref, the rules are used. So you can say:

  git branch master origin/master

which will make "refs/heads/master" from "refs/remotes/origin/master".

-Peff