Re: man page for "git remote set-url" seems confusing/contradictory

From: Jacob Keller <jacob.keller@gmail.com>
Date: Apr 16, 2018, 18:20 UTC
Message-ID: <CA+P7+xrDsPXA6Bq77gYwWtc16Dz4drg+CHA80=vBNB9-NhxHVg@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.LFD.2.21.1804160918120.6924@localhost.localdomain>

On Mon, Apr 16, 2018 at 9:19 AM, Robert P. J. Day <rpjday@crashcourse.ca> wrote:

Show 19 quoted lines

> On Mon, 16 Apr 2018, Andreas Schwab wrote:
>
>> On Apr 16 2018, "Robert P. J. Day" <rpjday@crashcourse.ca> wrote:
>>
>> > i don't understand how you can clearly set the fetch and push URLs
>> > of a remote independently, while the man page nonetheless insists
>> > that "even though they can be set differently, must still refer to
>> > the same place". how can they be set differently yet still must
>> > refer to the same place?
>>
>> They could be using different transport methods.  For example, for
>> fetching the unauthenticated git: method could be used, but for
>> pushing an authenticated method like ssh: is usually needed.
>
>   ok, point taken, but does that mean the two must actually refer to
> the same "place"? it seems that i'm perfectly free to use this command
> to set the push and fetch URLs to totally different locations.
>
> rday

Things won't work so well if you set the push url and fetch url to different repositories. Git assumes that refs updated by "push" will also be reflected via "fetch".

I don't know offhand what will break, but likely something will. For one, when you fetch again it will rewind your remotes after the push.

The URLs could be different for lots of reasons, but they need to ultimately link to the same remote repository. As Andreas said, the most likely reason is differing transport protocols.

Thanks, Jake