Re: [PATCH] builtin-branch: highlight current remote branches with an asterisk

On 2009.02.10 06:19:07 -0500, Jeff King wrote:

On Tue, Feb 10, 2009 at 08:52:14AM +0100, Björn Steinbrink wrote:

quoted

still don't really see what I'd use it for. From what I've heard, some
people just consider origin/HEAD a clone artifact without much use, and
so far, I think I agree. But maybe there's more to it?

The ref "origin" will resolve to "refs/remotes/origin/HEAD", if it
exists. So you can use it as a shorthand for "origin/master" (or
whatever branch is most interesting to you on the remote).

Yeah, that's what I meant when I said "short-shortname". Maybe it's just
me, but I really can't see myself using that. Would be likely that
"origin" references something else than what I expect, especially when
switching from one repo to another. And doing "git branch -r" to find
out if "origin" is the right thing is slower than just typing the full
shortname right away. Well, just my 2 cents.

quoted

If the <name>/HEAD symref would be created for all remotes and would get
updated, that would at least make the marker more meaningful, but I

It has been noted in the past that it should _not_ be automatically
updated, since it is really about "what is the user's preference for the
'most interesting' branch in this remote". And we don't want to
overwrite some preference that they specified.

Yeah, as I said in the other mail, having it as a default would make add
-m quite pointless.

So I think it makes sense to:

  - if it doesn't exist, set it up based on the remote's HEAD. Clone
    already does this, but "git remote add -f" should probably do it,
    too. I'm not sure if every fetch should do it.

FWIW, I would hate fetch for doing that. I dislike the whole
<remote>/HEAD thing, and wouldn't want fetch to recreate that for me all
the time.

  - give the user some nice interface (probably via "git remote") to
    move the pointer around (right now, it is "git symbolic-ref
    refs/remotes/$remote/HEAD refs/remotes/$remote/$branch").

Maybe "git remote set-master"? Though I kinda dislike the "master" part
of the name, which I just took from the -m option to "remote add",
though. I guess that could increase the confusion about the "master"
branch as pre-setup by "git init" being special, and might lead to
interesting conclusions about that command affecting the remote
repository.

  - give the user some nice interface to re-fetch the remote HEAD and
    update refs/remotes/$remote/HEAD with it. Probably as an option to
    the "git remote" invocation above.

Yeah, would make sense.

Björn