Re: git-fetch remote tag to local branch fails

From: Klas Lindberg <klas.lindberg@gmail.com>
Date: Jun 25, 2008, 08:50 UTC
Message-ID: <33f4f4d70806250150q41f09764m4ae0cc1cd6e15e30@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <8aa486160806240911p49d7bcb8q82a8d68c51206543@mail.gmail.com>

>> I am looking into the possibility of writing a tool that handles
>> configurations of trees.
>
> Maybe you should be using the plumbing commands.

Yes. It looks like it.

Show 5 quoted lines

>> For instance, I want the tool to be able to
>> consume some version of a configuration and create, update or reset
>> branches in other trees accordingly.
>
> What are the "other trees"?

One tree tracks a configuration file that just contains specs for other trees. The idea is something like this: Given a refspec on the configuration tree, git-view the configuration file and use the contained refspecs to clone/pull/fetch/reset/whatever a bunch of other trees.

Note that I'm not trying to solve the problem addressed by the submodules system in git; I need configuration management.

> Maybe you want to keep your local branches up to date with respect
> their tracking branch?

Well yes, but that is only half of it. One of the scenarios I'm pondering is this: A user wants to take an old configuration based on tags and try some use case that breaks a newer configuration. After the checkout, the working trees will not be "on" any branches (what's the word for that?). Unfortunately, most people seem to think that everything in a VCS happens on a branch. A lot of people will incorrectly assume that they are still on their "working branch" because they didn't check out a different branch! They checked out a tag and, like myself, have muddy ideas about what that actually means in relation to branches. I'd prefer to not have to tell them to try git-lost-found on a 40 different trees to recover commits that they made on non-branches.

I'll have to think more about this. It's not a functionality shortcoming, but a UI one.

> I don't see the point updating a branch with a tag, but you can make a
> tool to update a branch with a tag, see for example
> contrib/examples/git-fetch.sh.

Thank you. I'll have a look at that, but after our conversation I think I was mentally stuck in the land of some other VCS. I know perfectly well that a tag is not just a marker along some branch, but I realize now that I was thinking of it as if it was.

/Klas