Re: Re: Re: [Bug report] 'git status' always says "Your branch is up-to-date with 'origin/master'"

From: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
Date: Jan 6, 2014, 15:45 UTC
Message-ID: <20140106154552.GA22189@google.com>
In-Reply-To: <1283978462.720554.1388999328222.JavaMail.ngmail@webmail15.arcor-online.net>

Hi,

Thomas Ackermann wrote:

>>                                In repo_b your ref for origin/master
>> has not moved. It has remotely (meaning refs/heads/master in repo_a
>> has moved), but git status is not hitting the remote to find out; it
>> only looks at the local state.

[...]

> But for the simple use case where you only have a master
> branch I consider it not really helpful and - at least for me -
> misleading.

I see what you mean, and you're not the only one.

Git follows a rule of "never contact another machine unless explicitly asked to using a command such as 'git pull' or 'git fetch'". To support this, it makes a distinction between (1) the remote-tracking ref origin/master and (2) the actual branch "master" in the remote repository. The former is what is updated by 'git fetch', and the latter is something git does not know about without talking to the remote server.

What documentation did you use when first starting to learn git? Perhaps it can be fixed to emphasize the distinction between (1) and (2) earlier.

Thanks, Jonathan