Re: Your branch and 'origin/master' have diverged

From: Thomas Rast <trast@student.ethz.ch>
Date: Aug 15, 2012, 06:59 UTC
Message-ID: <87sjbo63pl.fsf@thomas.inf.ethz.ch>
In-Reply-To: <7vr4r98ah5.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>

Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:

Show 13 quoted lines

> Thomas Rast <trast@student.ethz.ch> writes:
>
>> In some sense this is a really bad case of wrong UI design, because we
>> (this happens on #git a lot) have to teach users not to use the command
>> so they won't trip over this problem.  It would be better to fix the
>> real issue instead.  IIRC it was even on the 1.8.0 wishlist...
>
> Is it?
>
> There already is a way to ask it to update the single tracking
> branch while fetching; "git fetch origin master" that
> unconditionally updates refs/remotes/origin/master without a way to
> tell it not to do so will be a grave usability regression.

Grave?  Do you have any data/use-cases to back that up with?

I have never had a need for a fetch that doesn't update the remote namespace, nor heard anyone on IRC who has. OTOH, I do have anecdotal evidence in support of "the current state is confusing": this thread, or the fact that Jan's IRC bot grew bot-quotes !fetch4/!pull4 that people use to warn users of 'git pull origin master' (it's apparently very common).

The 1.8.0 thread is here, and Peff even said he had a patch he uses in his tree:

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/165720/focus=165758

There's even a newer thread suggesting the same:

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/192252

-- 
Thomas Rast
trast@{inf,student}.ethz.ch