Re: Question regarding git fetch

From: Avery Pennarun <apenwarr@gmail.com>
Date: Aug 27, 2009, 15:36 UTC
Message-ID: <32541b130908270836m50553ccatddf4c870eec54ddb@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <1251387045053-3527289.post@n2.nabble.com>

On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 3:30 PM, Tom Lambda<tom.lambda@gmail.com> wrote:

> What was a little bit surprising to me is that running "git fetch central
> master" does not update refs/remotes/central/master but simply updates
> FETCH_HEAD.

I've often wanted this myself, especially when doing things like "git pull origin master". However, I know the current behaviour is also useful sometimes, and changing it would introduce an unexpected side effect. Git currently promises that your refs/remotes/* branches will never be updated unless you explicitly request it, even if you're fetching, merging, and pulling other stuff. This means you can write scripts to do complicated things without triggering unexpected user-visible side effects.

So basically, I agree that it would often be much more user-friendly to do what you're asking. But it would be less scripting-friendly. I don't think anyone has thought of an answer that better balances the two.

Have fun,

Avery