Re: Terminology question about remote branches.

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Aug 5, 2007, 07:31 UTC
Message-ID: <7v8x8qfnev.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net>
In-Reply-To: <854pjfin68.fsf@lola.goethe.zz>

David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> writes:

Show 6 quoted lines

> I am trying to dig through man-pages and user manual and trying to
> match them with reality.  I seem to have a hard time.  My current
> understanding (which definitely differs from the documented state) is
> that there are two types of branches, local and remote branches, and
> both types of branches can be remote-tracking (it may not be possible
> to have a non-remote-tracking remote branch, though).

I think we have a brief discussion on #git before you brought this up ;-)

 - local branches -- we know what they are.

 - remote tracking branches -- refs that appear in refs/remotes/
   in the current world order; they are updated only by copying
   the corresponding local branches at the remote site, and are
   meant to "keep track of what _they_ are doing".  In olden
   days before 1.5.0 with non separate remote layout,
   'refs/heads/origin' branch, and all the non default branches,
   were treated this way as well.  You were not supposed to make
   commit on them (because of the above "keep track of" reason),
   and having them under refs/heads were too confusing, which
   was the reason the separate remote layout was invented.

You can have a local branch that is created by forking off of a remote tracking branch, with the intention to "build on top" of the corresponding remote tracking brach. You can create such a branch and mark it as such with --track option introduced in v1.5.1 timeperiod. This is a relatively new concept, but many people find it useful. We do not have the official term to call this concept, and some people have misused the term "remote tracking branches" to describe this, which made things very confusing.

We would need an official terminology for it.