Re: git pull and merging.

["Aneesh Kumar K.V" <aneesh.kumar@gmail.com>]

Josef Weidendorfer wrote:
> On Wednesday 06 December 2006 11:05, Aneesh Kumar wrote:
>> [branch "devel"]
>>         remote = origin
>>         merge = devel
>>
>> [....]
>> Now i thought merge should be local reference. So i changed it to
>> merge = remotes/origin/devel.
>>
>> That also didn't work.
>>
>> Then i tried the name of the branch should be indicated as
>> "refs/heads/devel" . That also didn't work.
>>
>> So i guess i am missing something.
> 
> See man page of git-repo-config:
> 
>  branch.<name>.merge
>   When in branch <name>, it tells git fetch the default
>   remote branch to be merged.
> 
> I assume that the "devel" branch on the remote repo you cloned from
> is also "devel", more exactly "refs/heads/devel".
> 
> Now, instead of "git pull", git should default to
> 
> 	git pull origin refs/heads/devel:refs/remotes/origin/devel



this means the remote reference is refs/heads/devel and local tracking branch for that is refs/remotes/origin/devel.




> 
> ie. it should update the local tracking branch "refs/remotes/origin/devel"
> with the remote branch "refs/heads/devel".
> The tracking branch "refs/remotes/origin/devel" will be merged with current
> branch afterwards.
> 


That will be merged is the tricky part. 



> Now looking at the documentation for branch.<name>.merge, it talks
> about the remote branch, which is "refs/heads/devel" in your case, ie.
> the first part of the refspec of the full "git pull" command above.
> 

This is most confusing part. What merge indicate is not about refs/heads/devel
should track refs/remotes/origin/devel. That is specfied in the remote config option.

What merge indicate is that when in a local branch ( not the tracking one under remotes/origin)
which branch from remote need to be used to merge to the local branch.




> So, as you already posted (without explanation, therefore this mail),
> the config should be
> 
>  [branch "devel"]
>          remote = origin
>          merge = refs/heads/devel
> 
> However, "devel" alone should work here, as it can be matched with remote
> "refs/heads/devel". Seems to be a bug, as branch.<name>.merge seems to only
> being compared with the full canonical name in the implementation.


I guess we need to have a standard way of saying the branches. 

May be we want to document it in repo-config.

local branch on which changes can be made <branch-name>
local tracking branch refs/remotes/<remote-name>/<branch-name>
remote branch refs/heads/<branch-name>