Re: [PATCH] git push --track

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Jan 14, 2010, 23:46 UTC
Message-ID: <7vr5ps5jx1.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <20100114070316.GC1528@rm.endoftheinternet.org>

Rudolf Polzer <divVerent@alientrap.org> writes:

Show 12 quoted lines

> On Thu, Jan 14, 2010 at 09:27:26AM +0800, Tay Ray Chuan wrote:
>> before I put up my comments on the patch, I wonder if git-push is the
>> best place to add this feature, as git-push usually deals with
>> "pushing" data to another repo.
>> 
>> I think git-branch would be a better place to do this.
>
> I think git-branch can already do this: after pushing, you can do git
> branch -f --track origin/mybranch.
>
> But the goal of this is to postponing the decision to track to the push time,
> and adding as little as possible extra commands/options to do this.

Thinking about this again (when was the last time we discussed it?), I like the "git branch -f" suggestion (modulo one small nit).

Yes, "push --track" lets you postpone the decision; branching, working on it, pushing it out _and_ _then_ using your "branch -f" trick will let you postpone the decision even further. And it doesn't add --track to the UI.

The small nit is that "branch -f --track me origin/me" will happily overwrite "me", even when your "me" is not up to date with "origin/me", losing commits.

Perhaps we could teach "branch --track me origin/me" (i.e. no "-f") not to barf even when "me" exists, as long as "me" is a subset of "origin/me", and treat it as a request to re-configure the upstream information for the existing branch "me" and at the same time fast-forward it to "origin/me"?