Re: remote branches, and branch names in general

On Tue, Mar 03, 2009 at 10:52:21AM -0500, John Dlugosz wrote:

But I wonder if some commands work differently or specifically don't
look in remotes.  I "learned" to qualify everything when I accidently
created a local branch named pub/xxx instead of using remotes/pub/xxx
like I intended.  I don't remember what that was, but I'm guessing
that maybe refs that are a destination are different, as you are only
supposed to change your local stuff.  I think that was a "pull"
command, before I had the automatic argument in the config file.

Yes, the "branch" command deals only with creating things in refs/heads,
which are your local branches (similarly, "git tag" will only deal with
stuff in refs/tags). So "git branch origin/foo" will make a ref
"refs/heads/origin/foo", and "git branch -d origin/foo" will delete
"refs/heads/origin/foo", not "refs/remotes/origin/foo".

But when looking up a ref, the rules are used. So you can say:

  git branch master origin/master

which will make "refs/heads/master" from "refs/remotes/origin/master".

-Peff