"git pull REMOTE" question

["Miles Bader" <miles@gnu.org>]

Hi,

I have a .git/config file in my tree that looks like:

   [remote "origin"]
           url = ssh://HOST.org/home/miles/git/PROJECT.git
           fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*
   [remote "usb"]
           url = /media/usb/git/PROJECT.git
           fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/usb/*
   [branch "master"]
           remote = origin
           merge = refs/heads/master

and I'm normally using branch "master".

"git pull" or "git push", without arguments, do exactly the right thing for
interacting with the "origin" remote.

When I want to push to "usb" (a usb thumbdrive), "git push usb" also does I
want, but "git pull usb" does not:  the git-fetch phase of the git-pull
correctly fetches all the proper objects from the usb repository, but the
git-merge part of the git-pull fails with an error message like:

   Warning: No merge candidate found because value of config option
            "branch.master.merge" does not match any remote branch fetched.
   No changes.

[See end of this message for a more complete output of a the pull command.]

After doing the pull, I can manually do the merge I want using a
command like "git merge remotes/usb/master", but it's kind of annoying
to have to do this every time.

>From my experimentation, it seems that this is because the local
branch "master" can only ever be associated with one remote ("origin"
in this case), and the "branch.master.merge" config _only_ applies to
that remote.

Is there a way to set things up so that "git pull REMOTE"
automatically merges fetched branches when doing a non-default pull?
If not, wouldn't this be a good feature to add?

Thanks,

-Miles


Here's the complete output of the git-pull command:

   $ git pull usb
   remote: Generating pack...
   remote: Done counting 59 objects.
   remote: Result has 38 objects.
   remote: Deltifying 38 objects...
   remote:
   Unpacking 38 objects...
   remote: Total 38 (delta 21), reused 24 (delta 8)
     97% (37/38) done 100% (38/38) done
   * refs/remotes/usb/master: storing branch 'master' of /media/usb/git/PROJECT
     commit: 243e656
   * refs/remotes/usb/branch1: storing branch 'branch1' of
/media/usb/git/PROJECT
     commit: e08c6ac
   * refs/remotes/usb/branch2: storing branch 'branch2' of
/media/usb/git/PROJECT
     commit: 8ad20e8
   * refs/remotes/usb/branch3: storing branch 'branch3' of
/media/usb/git/PROJECT
     commit: e874f3d
   Warning: No merge candidate found because value of config option
            "branch.master.merge" does not match any remote branch fetched.
   No changes.
   $


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