From: Santi Béjar <santi@agolina.net>
Date: Thu, 18 Jun 2009 14:40:50 GMT
Subject: Re: [RFC/PATCH 1/2] remote tracking: return the tracking branch for the given branches
Message-ID: <adf1fd3d0906180740t637da9braea02deb3cba2680@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <200906181617.07802.jnareb@gmail.com>

2009/6/18 Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail.com>:
> On Thu, 18 June 2009, Santi Béjar wrote:
>> 2009/6/18 Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail.com>:
>
> [cut]
>> >
>> >  $ git remote tracking <remote> <remote branch>
>> >
>> > would show all local branches that track <remote branch>, and have
>> > <remote> as default remote,
>>
>> Maybe my description is unclear, but it's not about local branches
>> which track <branch> on <remote>, it is about the local branch
>> representation of the remote branch, i.e. not 'master' but
>> origin/master (git remote tracking origin master in a default clone).
>
> Ah, the problem with the same (or similar) name for two different
> things.  If we have local branch 'local' set to track branch 'master'
> on remote 'origin', we have:
>
>   /------- local repository ------\            /- origin -\
>  /                                 \          /            \
>  |                                 |          |            |
>  'local'  -------->  'origin/master' -----------> 'master'
>  refs/heads/local    refs/remotes/origin/master   refs/heads/master
>
>  branch.local.remote = origin
>  branch.local.merge  = refs/heads/master
>
>  remote.origin.fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*
>
> 'origin/master' is called remote-TRACKING branch (for 'master' branch
> on remote 'origin').  Setting up automerge information for local branch
> 'local' which _follows_ branch 'master' on remote 'origin' is done
> using --TRACK option to git-branch.
>
> Therefore the confusion.

OK, but I wonder if the documentation for the new command is clear
enough or can be improved.

>
>
> Do I understand correctly that you want for
>
>  $ git remote tracking origin master
>
> to return
>
>  origin/master

In this particular case (the above settings) not exactly, as master
does not match exactly the lhs of the refspec. It would be:

$ git remote tracking origin refs/heads/master
refs/remotes/origin/master

>
> (and perhaps also origin/HEAD?).

HEAD is another beast, as the local HEAD symlink is a local config,
that defaults to the remote default branch, but that you can change
with "git remote set-head".

Ops, you are saying to return origin/HEAD for "git remote tracking
origin master", no? I don't think it makes sense, I think of "git
remote tracking" more as a mapping function, it applies the map (the
refspec) to the given argument.

Santi