Re: [PATCH] Try harder to find a remote when on a detached HEAD or non-tracking branch.

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Jun 19, 2012, 17:55 UTC
Message-ID: <7vipen191a.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <4FE08797.50509@xiplink.com>

Marc Branchaud <marcnarc@xiplink.com> writes:

Show 14 quoted lines

> On 12-06-18 06:12 PM, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> ...
>> That reliance of "origin" is what made me think that "not guessing
>> and blindly assuming" a wrong thing to do.
>
> I think git can do better than erroring out, though.
>
>> It is OK that your build usesdetached HEAD, but if that is the case
>> shoudln't it be the one deciding which specific remote it wants to
>> take the updated sources from, and telling Git to do so?
>
> Sure, but I feel it did that already when it cloned.  It seems reasonable for
> the submodules to default to using the remote specified when the super-repo
> was cloned.

I do not have a strong opinion either way, other than that I would prefer predictable behaviour over "works most of the time provided if the user does X, otherwise does this random thing". And coming from that standpoint, erroring out when there needs a guess involved is certainly more predictable---it is a cop-out option for me in areas of the system I do not have strong preferences.

If you can work with submodule people (it is good that you Cc'ed Jens) to come up with a solution to make everything always use 'origin' when unconfigured in a consistent way, without breaking existing users who rely on the current behaviour, that would be good. Or a solution with a predictable behaviour you come up with may end up being something more involved than "just use 'origin' when you do not know". As long as the end result can be easily explained to end users, I wouldn't have any objection.

Thanks.