From: Julian Phillips Date: Sun, 05 Aug 2007 14:23:12 GMT Subject: Re: Terminology question about remote branches. Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <7v8x8qfnev.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net> On Sun, 5 Aug 2007, Junio C Hamano wrote: > David Kastrup writes: > >> I am trying to dig through man-pages and user manual and trying to >> match them with reality. I seem to have a hard time. My current >> understanding (which definitely differs from the documented state) is >> that there are two types of branches, local and remote branches, and >> both types of branches can be remote-tracking (it may not be possible >> to have a non-remote-tracking remote branch, though). > > I think we have a brief discussion on #git before you brought > this up ;-) > > - local branches -- we know what they are. > > - remote tracking branches -- refs that appear in refs/remotes/ > in the current world order; they are updated only by copying > the corresponding local branches at the remote site, and are > meant to "keep track of what _they_ are doing". In olden > days before 1.5.0 with non separate remote layout, > 'refs/heads/origin' branch, and all the non default branches, > were treated this way as well. You were not supposed to make > commit on them (because of the above "keep track of" reason), > and having them under refs/heads were too confusing, which > was the reason the separate remote layout was invented. > > You can have a local branch that is created by forking off of a > remote tracking branch, with the intention to "build on top" of > the corresponding remote tracking brach. You can create such a > branch and mark it as such with --track option introduced in > v1.5.1 timeperiod. This is a relatively new concept, but many > people find it useful. We do not have the official term to call > this concept, and some people have misused the term "remote > tracking branches" to describe this, which made things very > confusing. > > We would need an official terminology for it. Following was mentioned earlier in this thread ... could we use that? tracking branch: ref always points at a commit from the remote repo branch following branch: ref either points at a commit from the remote repo branch, or a local commit with a commit from the remote repo branch in the history perhaps? -- Julian --- An optimist is a man who looks forward to marriage. A pessimist is a married optimist.