Re: Which freedesktop.org "design flaws" in git are still relevant?

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Feb 29, 2008, 21:50 UTC
Message-ID: <7vmypjbfex.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <m3hcfrjwnk.fsf@localhost.localdomain>

Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail.com> writes:

Show 7 quoted lines

>> * git-fetch requires that the branch be named on both sides of
>>   the :. It should treat 'foo' as an alias for 'foo:foo'.
>
> So 'foo' is treated as 'foo:' (which means fetch, and not store), and
> not as 'foo:foo'. It is perhaps a bit strange, but backward
> compatibility would I think prohibit us to change it, even if it would
> make more sense to have it be shortcut for 'foo:foo' instead.

It is not strange nor b/c requirement at all. If anything, it could default to "foo:remotes/$remote/foo", not "foo:foo", but even then, it shouldn't.

You are missing a bigger picture. I think the list predates the introduction of separate remotes, which has been the default for more than a year.

You would have "fetch = refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*" these days in the configuration by default. What this means is that you would have much less reason to run "fetch $there foo" to begin with. The only time you would fetch in that way is when you want an unconfigured, single-shot fetch, in which case you do _NOT_ want tracking. So there is no valid reason to default "foo" to "foo:<anything>", unless that <anything> is empty. Not to foo:foo, not to foo:remotes/$remote/foo.

Many of the remaining parts of the complaint list share the misunderstanding coming from the lack of understanding of separate remotes layout.