Re: Terminology question about remote branches.

From: Steffen Prohaska <prohaska@zib.de>
Date: Aug 5, 2007, 10:56 UTC
Message-ID: <85172807-B7EB-47DD-813E-FAF5894E1190@zib.de>
In-Reply-To: <20070805100532.GG12507@coredump.intra.peff.net>

On Aug 5, 2007, at 12:05 PM, Jeff King wrote:

Show 23 quoted lines

> On Sat, Aug 04, 2007 at 04:01:55PM +0200, David Kastrup wrote:
>
>> So --track does not set up a tracking branch, but makes a local
>> _following_ branch _refer_ to a tracking branch.
>
> A minor nit, but --track sets up a local following branch to refer  
> to a
> remote's branch, _not_ to the tracking branch. In other words, if you
> look at the config:
>
>   [branch "master"]
>     remote = origin
>     merge = refs/heads/master
>
> It does _not_ reference the tracking branch
> "refs/remotes/origin/master", but rather the remote's name for the
> branch "refs/heads/master".
>
> There was much discussion of this topic, but the general idea was  
> not to
> require remote tracking branches for this feature to be used (a  
> position
> I somewhat disagree with, but then I'm not the maintainer).

Interesting. I didn't even recognize this detail up to know. It was somewhat beyond my imagination that I could have a local following/automerging branch that is directly referring to a branch in a remote repo, without have a remote-tracking branch.

How could I create such a setup in the first place?

     git branch --track something origin/something
     git checkout --track -b something origin/something

are obvious, but what to say if I don't have origin/something?

	Steffen