Per-remote tracking branch

Hi,

Is there a way, with Git, to specify a tracking branch on a per-remote basis?

At the moment, I can configure a tracking branch to let me just type

$ git pull

when I want to say

$ git pull origin master

Now, assume I have another remote "foo", I'd like to be able to just say

$ git pull foo

and put something in my .git/config so that Git knows I mean

$ git pull foo master

Is there a simple way to do that?

(for the motivation: I mostly use Git with a 1-branch-per-repo setup, so in 99% of my use-cases, when I have to specify a branch, it's master).

Thanks,

On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 05:29:58PM +0200, Matthieu Moy wrote:

I don't think so, and I'm not sure there is an easy way to extend the current configuration scheme. Adding multiple config options like this:

  [branch "master"]
    remote = origin
    merge = refs/heads/master
    remote = alternate
    merge = refs/heads/master

looks a bit hack-ish to me, as there is an implicit correlation between the ordering of 'merge' entries and 'remote' entries.

And it feels a little backwards. When I say "git pull foo", I would find it equally likely to discover the pulled branch under "remote.foo" as it would to find it under "branch.master". Of course, in either case, you have to combine the context (current branch _and_ selected remote) to come up with the actual information. So I guess either is "equally correct" in a sense.

Anyway, mostly just my idle speculation.

-Peff

Hi, and thanks for your answer,

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

I had tried this in case it would have worked ;-).

Actually, for my particular use case (aka "almost always only one branch per repo"), I could as well have a remote.foo.defaultBranch regardless of the current local branch. Then, if I say "git pull foo", it would understand it as "git pull foo <remote.foo.defaultBranch>".

If other people would be interested in such feature, say so, I may give it a try when I have time. If I'm the only one, I guess I'll let my fingers type the extra " master" instead ;-).

On 2009.09.15 17:29:58 +0200, Matthieu Moy wrote:

Setup "foo" so that it fetches "master" only, i.e. have remote.foo.fetch = refs/heads/master:refs/remotes/foo/master

You get that setup with: git remote add -t master foo git://...

Then there's only one possible choice for "git pull", and it will take that.

Björn

On 2009.09.24 13:25:50 +0200, Björn Steinbrink wrote:

Ah, crap, spoke too soon. That works only when branch.<name>.merge is not set. Though that's not that much of a problem. When your "primary" remote (the one set for branch.<name>.remote) also fetches just a single branch, "git pull" will still work, even if branch.<name>.merge is not set.

Björn

Björn Steinbrink <B.Steinbrink@gmx.de> writes:

Yes, that's it. Thanks for your anwser, it works.