Re: GIT vs Other: Need argument

[Josef Weidendorfer <Josef.Weidendorfer@gmx.de>]

On Monday 23 April 2007, Carl Worth wrote:
> On Thu, 19 Apr 2007 13:57:35 -0700 (PDT), Linus Torvalds wrote:
> >  - Case #1 would be using git basically as a "anonymous CVS" replacement
> >    to track somebody others project.
> 
> I'd extend this to also say "tracking a specific branch" in some
> project.
> 
> When I raised this recently, Junio suggested something like the
> following:
> 
> 	git config --global branch.autosetupmerge true	[*]
> 	git clone <URL>
> 	git checkout -b <branch> origin/<branch>
> 	git pull
> 
> I haven't gotten around to replying to that message yet, but the
> thrust of my reply would be that that does actually work, but it's not
> even close to the ease with which one can track the default branch as
> Linus described:

The commands above are not needed for pure tracking, but instead prepare
a local development branch for you to work on, and where you can pull
upstream changes with "git pull".
For tracking a remote $branch, it should be enough to do

 git clone
 git fetch

and you get the any (*) remote $branch as "remotes/origin/$branch".

Josef


(*) Perhaps the "any" is too much for wanting to track one branch only?

> 
> >    None of the above are ever really needed for that case, and I think all
> >    you really want to learn is:
> >
> > 	git clone
> > 	git pull
> 
> So, currently, all non-default branches have a sort of second-class
> status from the point of view of users that just want to track
> them.
> 
> Compare this to svn, for example. Now, svn has an insanely broken
> model for what a branch actually is, while git's model is sane.  But I
> think that with svn the "anonymously tracking a branch" use case isn't
> any harder for any one branch compared to any other, (it's just a
> matter of starting with the right URL). I'd love to see git achieve
> the same thing.
> 
> -Carl
> 
> [*] Is the command I have above even correct? What Junio actually
> suggested was:
> 
> 	$ cat >>$HOME/.gitconfig <<\EOF
> 	[branch]
> 		autosetupmerge
> 	EOF
> 
> But I can't find a way to use git-config create a block that looks
> like that. I'm just guessing that "autosetupmerge = true" works
> equivalently, but I could be wildly wrong.
>