Re: origin/branchname and tracking branch pointing to different commits?

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Jun 8, 2010, 17:25 UTC
Message-ID: <7vljaptp1j.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <AANLkTinLVd483-ki6tVb545PgpOFeOLYLR_GiKM5xAl7@mail.gmail.com>

Eugene Sajine <euguess@gmail.com> writes:

Show 27 quoted lines

> On Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 8:32 PM, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
>> Eugene Sajine <euguess@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>> $ git fetch origin branchname
>>>
>>> are both causing the output like this:
>>>
>>> From git://....
>>> * branch      branchname    -> FETCH_HEAD
>>> ...
>>>
>>> but "git fetch" says:
>>>
>>> From git://....
>>> * branch      branchname    -> origin/branchname
>>>
>>> Is this inconsistent behavior necessary by design?
>>
>> It is by design...
>
> I'm coming back to this topic as i see some confusion growing about
> such behavior. Every now and then users come across this problem and
> they expect pull to *really* behave as fetch and merge so it will
> cause the update of remote/branchname branch. And it is kind of
> difficult to justify why they have to do git fetch after pull...
>
> Can somebody, please, take a look?

In your transcript, they can say "git fetch" (or "git fetch origin") and branch is copied to origin/branch, so instead of doing:

    $ git fetch origin branchname
    $ git log FETCH_HEAD ;# or whatever inspection using FETCH_HEAD

they can do

    $ git fetch ;# or git fetch origin
    $ git log origin/branch ;# or whatever inspection using it

In short, teach them that they no longer have reason to learn or run "git fetch origin branchname".