Re: avoiding fetching specific refs from a remote

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Aug 5, 2020, 06:37 UTC
Message-ID: <20200805063704.GA2690083@coredump.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <CA+P7+xpokJ3Z4xZ9ibCBpBO65D1v-AD6_JknprGUsEDxEvMGGw@mail.gmail.com>

On Tue, Aug 04, 2020 at 02:53:30PM -0700, Jacob Keller wrote:

Show 9 quoted lines

> This results in the annoying completion behavior where:
> 
> $git checkout ma<TAB>
> main
> master
> 
> Essentially, because both main and master have similar names, tab
> completion requires remembering to type one additional character than
> I am used to.

Heh, I didn't think anybody considered that implication so far; the fact that they were similar names has generally been considered a positive. I agree it would be annoying.

> I'd like to be able to customize my pull so that I either (a) exclude
> the reference when performing a fetch, or (b) exclude the reference
> when tab completing.

Not quite (b), but if you:

  - delete any local "master" branch, if you haven't already

  - set $GIT_COMPLETION_CHECKOUT_NO_GUESS to "1"

then it shouldn't complete "master". The second is necessary because we'd try to complete the magic "git checkout master" that auto-creates the branch from the remote version.

Show 6 quoted lines

> something like adding a remote.<name>.excludeRefs which would allow
> specifying a set of references to exclude from matching the refspec..
> 
> I realize I could customize the refspec to list the set of things I
> want, but then I would miss any potential future branches until I
> updated my remote config again.

This is definitely a reasonable thing to want, and it has come up off and on over the years. One search term for the list archive is "negative refspecs", though it turns up a lot of useless hits when the two words are not directly adjacent.

This old thread might be worth reading:

  https://lore.kernel.org/git/20140124090104.GA396@x4/

and there is even a patch in there:

  https://lore.kernel.org/git/20140125013433.GA22336@sigill.intra.peff.net/

but I didn't go over it carefully enough to know whether it is utter trash, or something that could be used as a starting point.

-Peff