Re: [PATCH] clone: fix refspec on "--single-branch" option

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Sep 14, 2012, 16:02 UTC
Message-ID: <7v7grw7ftj.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <CACsJy8BLwd=XeHFqg5jb=yx3p6xdKuzvG+KvfotfLf0vfSZdRQ@mail.gmail.com>

Nguyen Thai Ngoc Duy <pclouds@gmail.com> writes:

Show 10 quoted lines

> On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 1:48 PM, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
>
>> Alternatively, if you can move the logic to set up this
>> configuration further down so that it happens after we talked to the
>> other side and figured out remote_head_points_at, you could instead
>> set it up to keep a single remote tracking branch.
>
> That sounds reasonable. I have a question though, what should a user
> do when he/she want to fetch all branches again? Messing up with
> refspec in config file is not something I would like to do.

You first have to think ;-).

I would say there are two kinds of users.

 - To the simplistic ones who fear the power of configuration, we
   can simply tell "You don't. Use 'single' when you want to keep
   working with the single branch. If you want full, reclone, and
   migrate your work from the single one by fetching from it to the
   full clone before discarding the single one".

 - To the ones who wants to take the full advantage of flexibility
   of configuration, we can tell "remotes.$name.fetch configuration
   is your friend. Do whatever you want to do with it, but here are
   two hints".  The hints would cover the case to revert to the
   default refspec, and the case to add another specific branch.

These days, with "git config" and "git remote" wrappers, I do not particularly see a need to fear the power of configuration, though.