Re: Feature request: fetch --prune by default

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Aug 16, 2012, 23:27 UTC
Message-ID: <7vvcgixvrw.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <068F71AC-DACD-4545-AB21-F911A934DA3E@gmail.com>

Alexey Muranov <alexey.muranov@gmail.com> writes:

Show 17 quoted lines

> On 20 Jul 2012, at 09:11, Johannes Sixt wrote:
> ...
>> Note the difference between "tracking branch" and "remote tracking
>> branch"! The "remote tracking branches" are the refs in the refs/remotes/
>> hierarchy. The "tracking branches" are your own local branches that you
>> have created with 'git branch topic thatremote/topic' (or perhaps 'git
>> checkout -b'). The paragraph talks about the latter.
>
> Hannes, thanks for the explanation, so i was confused once again.
>
> Various blog posts do not make the terminology clear, for example
> http://gitready.com/beginner/2009/03/09/remote-tracking-branches.html
> sais that there are only "two types of branches: local, and remote-tracking"...
> ...
> I think i was also misguided by Konstantin, who wrote that "you
> create a remote tracking branch when you intend to actually
> *develop* something on that branch" :).

I was re-reading the backlog today, and saw this topic fizzled out.

We obviously cannot fix third-party documentation that teach lies to people, but is there something we can do to improve our own documentation with respect to this confusion?

As I wrote it elsewhere, I try to avoid the bareword "tracking" in general, and call the local branch you build on something like "your 'next' branch that forked from origin/next remote tracking branch" myself. Perhaps we can start from checking the documentation with such a phrasing discipline?