Re: [Feature request] Separate explicit fetch mapping from default fetch selection

[Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>]

"Douglas Puchalski (dpuchals)" <dpuchals@cisco.com> writes:

> Git version: 2.55.0
> Environment: macOS 26.6
>
> I configure a remote to fetch only a small default set of branches:
>
>     [remote "origin"]
>         fetch = +refs/heads/main:refs/remotes/origin/main
>         fetch = +refs/heads/team/*:refs/remotes/origin/team/*
>
> This prevents `git fetch origin` from fetching and updating a very large
> number of remote branches.
>
> When I explicitly request another branch:
>
>     git fetch origin topic/example
>
> Git fetches the branch into FETCH_HEAD but does not create or update:
>
>     refs/remotes/origin/topic/example

I haven't thought things through, but I suspect that what you want
might be an opposite of explicitly listing what is tracked on
remote.*.fetch configuration, but having remotes/origin/* hierarchy
of refs as the source of the tracking information.

It was a long ago this was invented, and I haven't used it for
almost forever, but shouldn't this

    $ git fetch \
            --refmap="refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*" \
            origin topic/example

do what you want to do?  If so, perhaps it would make a good
starting point to make it easier to use (e.g., perhaps a
configuration variable can specify the refmap to be used, or
something).