Re: How can I tell if a file has been updated upstream?

From: Shawn O. Pearce <spearce@spearce.org>
Date: Feb 5, 2010, 16:44 UTC
Message-ID: <20100205164407.GA27498@spearce.org>
In-Reply-To: <ed82fe3e1002050823gec57827j184c9c4cff4f4a45@mail.gmail.com>

Timur Tabi <timur@freescale.com> wrote:

Show 9 quoted lines

> Is there a way for me to tell if a particular file in my repository
> has an update in the upstream repository?  For example, the SHA of the
> HEAD is different in the remote repository than it is of the HEAD in
> the local repository.
> 
> The reason I ask is that I have a set of Python scripts that I
> distribute via git (other people in the company clone my repository).
> I want my script, every time it's run, to check if an update is
> available, and ask the user to do "git pull".

You can't tell a particular file, but you could use something like `git ls-remote refs/heads/master` to see what the branch is at, and compare that to the last known commit. If its changed, then suggest the user do a fetch.

I do this in repo, only I run `git fetch` once per day for the end-user. That way the objects are local, and I can use a local check to see if there are updates that need to be pulled into the executable working directory.

-- 
Shawn.