# git pull error message woes

2 messages from 2008-06-19 to 2008-06-19. Participants: Matthias Kestenholz, Daniel Barkalow.
Thread: https://gitlist.dev/t/14033

## Matthias Kestenholz, 2008-06-19 07:32

Subject: git pull error message woes
Message-ID: <1213860773.6444.9.camel@localhost>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/1213860773.6444.9.camel%40localhost

```
Hi,

I noticed strange behavior while pulling git.git today (this isn't new,
it just occurred to me for the first time today that there is something
wrong going on)

I run the 'pu' branch most of the time, and do not create a local branch
because 'pu' is constantly rebased. I just run git checkout origin/pu
after pulling (I know I should fetch if I don't want to fetch+merge, but
it's hard to retrain the fingers)

Although I am on no branch ($curr_branch is empty), I get the error
message from error_on_no_merge_candidates instead of being notified that
I am on no branch currently. Something around line 150-160 in
git-pull.sh does not seem to work as it should.

The reason might be, that every line in .git/FETCH_HEAD is marked as
not-for-merge?

I don't know if that's the sign of a deeper problem or if it's just
confusing behavior.

I tried fixing it myself, but got lost somewhere in the fetch machinery.

Matthias

```

## Daniel Barkalow, 2008-06-19 18:57

Subject: Re: git pull error message woes
Message-ID: <alpine.LNX.1.00.0806191446590.19665@iabervon.org>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/alpine.LNX.1.00.0806191446590.19665%40iabervon.org
In-Reply-To: <1213860773.6444.9.camel@localhost>

```
On Thu, 19 Jun 2008, Matthias Kestenholz wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I noticed strange behavior while pulling git.git today (this isn't new,
> it just occurred to me for the first time today that there is something
> wrong going on)
> 
> I run the 'pu' branch most of the time, and do not create a local branch
> because 'pu' is constantly rebased. I just run git checkout origin/pu
> after pulling (I know I should fetch if I don't want to fetch+merge, but
> it's hard to retrain the fingers)
> 
> Although I am on no branch ($curr_branch is empty), I get the error
> message from error_on_no_merge_candidates instead of being notified that
> I am on no branch currently. Something around line 150-160 in
> git-pull.sh does not seem to work as it should.

There's no reason you couldn't pull when on no branch. It's just that, 
without a branch, there's nowhere to get a default ref to merge, which 
leads to having nothing to merge (if you don't give anything specific), 
which leads to that error.

On the other hand, you could do:

 git pull <some URL> <some branch>

and git would happily merge the specified branch of the specified 
repository for you. So the reason that git-pull doesn't give you the error 
you expect is that that's not necessarily an error at all.

	-Daniel
*This .sig left intentionally blank*

```