Re: Terminology question about remote branches.

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

Julian Phillips <julian@quantumfyre.co.uk> writes:

> On Sun, 5 Aug 2007, Junio C Hamano wrote:
>>
>> I think we have a brief discussion on #git before you brought
>> this up ;-)
>>
>> - local branches -- we know what they are.
>>
>> - remote tracking branches -- refs that appear in refs/remotes/
>>   in the current world order; they are updated only by copying
>>   the corresponding local branches at the remote site, and are
>>   meant to "keep track of what _they_ are doing".  In olden
>>   days before 1.5.0 with non separate remote layout,
>>   'refs/heads/origin' branch, and all the non default branches,
>>   were treated this way as well.  You were not supposed to make
>>   commit on them (because of the above "keep track of" reason),
>>   and having them under refs/heads were too confusing, which
>>   was the reason the separate remote layout was invented.
>>
>> You can have a local branch that is created by forking off of a
>> remote tracking branch, with the intention to "build on top" of
>> the corresponding remote tracking brach.  You can create such a
>> branch and mark it as such with --track option introduced in
>> v1.5.1 timeperiod.  This is a relatively new concept, but many
>> people find it useful.  We do not have the official term to call
>> this concept, and some people have misused the term "remote
>> tracking branches" to describe this, which made things very
>> confusing.
>>
>> We would need an official terminology for it.
>
> Following was mentioned earlier in this thread ... could we use that?
>
> tracking branch:
>   ref always points at a commit from the remote repo branch
>
> following branch:
>   ref either points at a commit from the remote repo branch, or a
>   local commit with a commit from the remote repo branch in the history
>
> perhaps?

An auto-merging branch?  The term is somewhat more technical so that
people are less likely to think it just a colloquial alternative
expression for "tracking".

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum