Re: When does git check for branch-X being uptodate with origin/branch-X?

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Mar 21, 2016, 20:50 UTC
Message-ID: <20160321205043.GA436@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <CA+39Oz4Atuv3N0QNj8o1SYgHzMUyES1QHUsWh-MdNiNr-xPM_w@mail.gmail.com>

On Mon, Mar 21, 2016 at 08:43:17PM +0000, Thomas Adam wrote:

Show 11 quoted lines

> On 21 March 2016 at 20:28, Jeff King <peff@peff.net> wrote:
> > We never contact other repositories unless explicitly asked to by
> > fetch, pull, push, etc. If you want to have the most up-to-date value
> > without merging, you can just "git fetch" to update the tracking
> > branches.
> 
> Thanks.  I understand how to use git-fetch, it's more a case of
> whether even printing that message is useful?  I appreciate it can
> only go on the cached value, but it is still misleading to print that
> in the case where the cache might not be up to date.  Of course,
> determining that is a different problem.

I don't think it is limited to this particular message. _Any_ operation that uses the tracking branches is going to potentially be out of date with respect to what has happened on a remote server (so any time you look at @{upstream}, or do a "rebase" without an arguments, etc).

Those things are useful, even if your local tracking branch may not reflect the latest value on the server. If there is anything to fix, IMHO, it is for the documentation to make more clear the mental model of the workflow of "fetch separately, then all other operations are disconnected".

But that's just my opinion. Did you have some specific change you're interested in? I don't think removing that message is productive; it _is_ useful information. Perhaps it could be more clear that we are talking about the tracking branch?

-Peff