Re: [PATCH] add --remote option to git-clone.

From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Date: Feb 5, 2007, 18:43 UTC
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0702051014040.8424@woody.linux-foundation.org>
In-Reply-To: <7vmz3smqpp.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net>

On Mon, 5 Feb 2007, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 8 quoted lines

> Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> writes:
> >
> > 	git clone git://.../git.git#html
> >
> > to mean "just fetch the branch html, and check it out".
> 
> Except that I do not particularly think the URL fragment
> notation is such a "cool" syntax.

I think the cogito '#'<branch> syntax is braindead.

Much better to use native git syntax, which is to just list the branch separately. Why? Not only is it the way we do things for pull and friends, it's also what allows us to specify *multiple* branches.

So I would personally welcome a "clone just a particular branch", but in that case I'd like it to be able to say more than one too..

(In general, even if I clone _everything_, I'd also like to perhaps set the default 'master' branch to track something else than what I'm cloning from. In fact, I think I'd generally prefer cloning everything, but sometimes I'd like to say "I'm going to track the upstreams branch xyzzy rather than their default branch").

I realize that the

	git clone <repo> [<dir>]

means that we can't have the same syntax as "git pull" (which doesn't take the <dir> part), but that doesn't make the "#branch" syntax any better.

So I much prefer the

	git clone [--default branch] [--branch x]* <repo> [<dir>

kind of syntax.

			Linus