Re: How to check new commit availability without full fetch?

From: Nicolas Pitre <nico@fluxnic.net>
Date: Jan 10, 2010, 20:13 UTC
Message-ID: <alpine.LFD.2.00.1001101501520.10143@xanadu.home>
In-Reply-To: <ee2a733e1001100312j786108fct1b4c8abd0acc5afc@mail.gmail.com>

On Sun, 10 Jan 2010, Leo Razoumov wrote:

> Hi List,
> I am trying to find a way to check availability of new commits
> *before* doing fetch or pull. Unfortunately, neither fetch nor pull
> take "--dry-run" option (unlike push)

But... _Why_ do you want/need to do that?

You could use ls-remote to see what the remote branch is pointing to, e.g.:

	git ls-remote origin master

and compare with the local view of that remote branch:

	git show-ref origin/master

And if both SHA1 strings match then there is nothing new to fetch.

> I am sure I am not the only one with such an itch.

Maybe you are. There is very little point knowing that the remote repo has new commits if you're not going to fetch them, so I don't understand why you need this.

Nicolas