Re: Branch relationships

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

On Monday 15 May 2006 00:19, you wrote:
> > I suppose "branch.<branch name>.origin" is still the way to go for
> > specifying the upstream?
> 
> Probably "origin" is a better name for it; I was assuming
> "branch.<branch name>.remote = foo" refers to a [remote "foo"]
> section and means "when on this branch, pull from foo and merge
> from it".

Maybe.

But there is a misunderstanding. I wanted the branch attribute "origin"
to specify the upstream _branch_, not a remote.
After a "git clone", we would have

 [remote "origin"]
   url = ...
   fetch = master:origin

 [branch "master"]
   origin = "origin" ; upstream of master is local branch "origin"

 [branch "origin"]
   tracksremote ; bool

Now adding a further development branch for remote branch "topic", we would add

 [remote "origin"]
   ...
   fetch = topic:tracking-topic

 [branch "local-topic"]
   origin = "tracking-topic"

 [branch "tracking-topic"]
   tracksremote

Now, a "git pull" on branch "local-topic" does the right thing: it fetches
from remote "origin", as "tracking-topic" is given in a refspec there, and merges
"tracking-topic" to the current branch "local-topic", as given by the origin
attribute.

This also extends to local upstreams: a "git checkout -b topic2 master" would
append

 [branch "topic2"]
   origin = "master"

and a "git pull" on topic2 would merge the upstream "master".

Josef