From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Fri, 25 Oct 2013 06:14:59 GMT
Subject: Re: Fwd: Errors when diff'ing arbitrary upstream remotes are not intuitive if git pull --all hasn't been done
Message-ID: <20131025061459.GA23524@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <20131025061407.GE11810@sigill.intra.peff.net>

On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 02:14:07AM -0400, Jeff King wrote:

> >     Could this error message be improved for interactive commands by
> > first checking to see whether or not the path starts with a remote,
> > then recommend that the remote be pulled?
> 
> That might be worth doing. We cannot definitely say the branch exists
> without hitting the network (which we would not want to do in the
> general case), but I think it is reasonable for git to give suggestions
> (we could also give a "did you mean X..." for near-typos, as we do for
> typo-ed commands like "git dif".
> 
> If you do try it, please don't just check for the remote name, but
> actually complete the right-hand side of the fetch refspec for each
> remote. They are equivalent in the default config, but aren't
> necessarily so (and there has been talk of adjusting the layout of
> remote refspecs). I don't recall offhand what functions we have to help
> you, but I believe Johan (cc'd) was working in this area recently and
> might be able to say more.

...and of course I forgot to cc Johan in the original.

-Peff