Qn about git pull and git fetch

Hi everyone,

This is my first post to the list. I am a new (few months now) git user and I use it for source code and notes for my research projects. I noticed something during the course of my use. If I have a remote tracking repository, and I do a `git pull origin master', the latest changes are merged into my currently checked out branch. But the references to the remote repo are not. So when I fire up gitk like this, `gitk --all &' I don't see the latest commits for origin/master. I have to manually run `git fetch origin' or `git remote update origin' to see the updated commits in gitk.

This is not an inconvenience for me, just a little puzzling since the man page says git pull runs `git fetch' followed by `git mege'. Just out of curiosity, is there any reason for this choice?

On Sep 28, 2010, at 12:59 PM, suvayu ali wrote:

`git pull origin master` does the following:
- `git fetch origin master` will fetch the master branch from remote
   origin into FETCH_HEAD
- `git merge` will then merge FETCH_HEAD into HEAD

It sounds like what you want is to get your branch as a tracking branch. If you see the following in `git remote show origin`:

[...]
  Local branch configured for 'git pull':
    master merges with remote master
[...]

Then all you have to do is `git pull`. It will update all tracking branches for origin, then merge origin/master into master. The command `git pull origin master` is telling git to override whatever defaults it has and merge the master branch from remote origin into your current HEAD.

Your branches should be set to track automatically but if they didn't for some reason and are using v1.7.0 or newer, you can:

$ git branch --set-upstream master origin/next Branch master set up to track remote branch next from origin. $ git pull

If you're using git prior to v1.7.0, you can instead:

$ git config branch.master.remote origin $ git config branch.master.merge refs/heads/master $ git pull

(Note: You only have to use `git branch --set-upstream` or the `git config ...` lines once, not before every pull.)

~~ Brian

Hi Brian,

On 28 September 2010 10:33, Brian Gernhardt <brian@gernhardtsoftware.com> wrote:

That explains it! I was overriding the default hence it didn't track the remote branches as expected. Following the steps you mentioned above confirmed that. On doing just `git pull' gave me the behaviour I was expecting in the first place. :)

Thanks a lot for pointing me to these. I am using git v1.7.0.4, v1.7.2.3 and v1.7.2.2. The above utilities will be very helpful in the future to configure exactly how I want my repository to behave.

On 11:59 AM, Brian Gernhardt wrote:

Seems to me that to be equivalent, the first should be:

	git branch --set-upstream master origin/master

or the second should be:

	git config branch.master.merge refs/heads/next

Eh?

On Sep 28, 2010, at 3:51 PM, Eric Raible wrote:

Oops.  I had forgotten to change the first one after some experimenting on the git.git repo.  I had meant

$ git branch --set-upstream master origin/master

Far more repos have a master branch than a next one.

~~ Brian