Re: Getting new branches from remote repo.

From: Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net>
Date: Nov 13, 2006, 18:17 UTC
Message-ID: <7vr6w78b4x.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net>
In-Reply-To: <20061113091736.GA31693@diana.vm.bytemark.co.uk>

Karl Hasselström <kha@treskal.com> writes:

Show 13 quoted lines

>> After finding out $that_new_branch's name, add either
>>
>>       Pull: refs/heads/$that_new_branch:refs/heads/$that_new_branch
>>
>> or if you are in "separate remote" school, then perhaps
>>
>>       Pull: refs/heads/$that_new_branch:refs/remotes/origin/$that_new_branch
>>
>> to .git/remotes/origin and running git fetch would give you what you
>> want, I think.
>
> There really should be a flag to make git fetch do this job. And if we
> use separate remotes, the flag should probably default to "on".

While I do not necessarily agree that "git fetch" is the place to do so, I think it is sensible to have a way to easily manage remotes/$origin file.

Things to consider are:

 - We need to notice new branches at the other end.

 - We need to remember old branches that the user is not
   interested in, so that we do not even ask to add it only
   because it does not have a local tracking branch.

 - We need to notice branches that disappeared at the other
   end.  We may want to offer the choice between droping the
   local tracking branch and keeping it in the 'the last
   fetched' state.

So from the UI point of view, considering that "git fetch" might be called as a part of "git pull", a sensible thing to do would be:

 - Add "Pull-ignored:" lines to list remote branches that the
   user is not interested in to .git/remotes/$origin file, and
   teach existing tools to ignore them.

 - Make "git fetch" to always run "ls-remote" (we would need to
   do this anyway to enable commit walkers to fetch from a
   repository that has packed and then pruned its refs) upfront,
   and do the "noticing" part and issue an info message when
   there are new branches (we should only do this when a
   shorthand from .git/remotes/ is used).

 - Add "git maint-remote" command that lets the user compare
   ls-remote output and Pull: lines from remotes/$origin file,
   and add/modify/delete the mapping to local tracking branches.

I think the last one is probably the easiest for the users if done with something like dialog or whiptail.