Re: "git fetch -p" incorrectly deletes branches

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Jan 26, 2017, 21:18 UTC
Message-ID: <20170126211834.eplmjcohv3d4zsym@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <20170117060428.nanqz5lr4hi6dum6@reimardoeffinger.de>

On Tue, Jan 17, 2017 at 07:04:28AM +0100, Reimar Döffinger wrote:

Show 11 quoted lines

> Deletes refs/heads/test every second time when run repeatedly:
> 
> $ git fetch -p -v origin master:refs/heads/test
> From https://github.com/git/git
>  * [new branch]          master     -> test
>  = [up to date]          master     -> origin/master
> $ git fetch -p -v origin master:refs/heads/test
> From https://github.com/git/git
>  - [deleted]             (none)     -> test
>  = [up to date]          master     -> test
>  = [up to date]          master     -> origin/master

Hmm. It seems like the problem is that "-p" is saying "the other side does not have refs/heads/test; we must prune it". But I think it is probably nonsense to apply pruning to a non-wildcard refspec.

> Also note that this behaviour appears also when fetch.prune=yes
> is set in the config (instead of -p on the command-line),
> which makes it much less obvious and there is no option to turn
> of prune just for that command to work-around this.

There is a separate issue of whether it is sane to apply fetch.prune to a refspec given on the command line; I can imagine it as surprising, to say the least.

I think "--no-prune" would disable it, though.

-Peff