From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 01:11:48 GMT
Subject: Re: setting up tracking on push
Message-ID: <7vprgnlf3f.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <76718490903111758l4e4bd29et379e975deb8e99bd@mail.gmail.com>

Jay Soffian <jaysoffian@gmail.com> writes:

> On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 8:08 PM, John M. Dlugosz
> <ngnr63q02@sneakemail.com> wrote:
>> On a related note, what exactly does "tracking" mean?  I know that I can
>> push/pull local names that match up with names on the origin, and that the
>> latter are in the remotes/origin subdirectory.  Those are what I think are
>> called "remote tracking branches".  Or is that just a part of the whole
>> story?  What is the correct nomenclature?
>
> http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/54822/

I do not think the description of remote-tracking in that article is
correct.  We use the word to call remote/origin/<name> that keeps copies
of what we saw over there when we last observed.

The way to mark local branches to merge with/rebase onto something else
by default is --track option to "git branch" and "git checkout -b", and
that is often used to mark them to --track remote-tracking branches but
they do not have to --track remote-tracking branches.  They can --track 
local branches as well.