Re: [PATCH] Introduce <branch>@{tracked} as shortcut to the tracked branch

On Thursday 10 September 2009, Michael J Gruber wrote:

Johan Herland venit, vidit, dixit 10.09.2009 12:18:

quoted

On Thursday 10 September 2009, Michael J Gruber wrote:

quoted

Johannes Schindelin venit, vidit, dixit 10.09.2009 11:36:

quoted

Often, it is quite interesting to inspect the branch tracked by a
given branch.  This patch introduces a nice notation to get at
the tracked branch: '<branch>@{tracked}' can be used to access
that tracked branch.

A special shortcut '@{tracked}' refers to the branch tracked by
the current branch.

Sorry, I didn't know the name of the long form was up for
discussion. But it should certainly coincide with the key which
for-each-ref uses, shouldn't it? I don't care whether tracked or
upstream, but for-each-ref's "upstream" has set the precedent.

...and 'git branch --track' set an even earlier precedent...

an unfortunate one, yes. It brings us back to an old discussion. The
consensus was what's in the glossary:

[snip]

Maybe this is a good time to either

- change the definition of "tracking branch" (to one having an
upstream which is in refs/remotes/; and call "remote upbranch" what's
in refs/remotes/) or
- rename the option and output of git checkout -b/git branch --track.

Accordingly, either tracked or something else (such as upstream)
would be appropriate for the for-each-ref key and the ref specifier.

Sure, as someone else already stated, I don't care too much what it's 
named, as long as the naming is consistent across all of git. We do 
have an unforunate name clash between remote-tracking branches (i.e. 
branches under refs/remotes/) and 'tracking' branches (i.e. 'git 
branch --track') [1], and I believe 1.7.0 would be a nice opportunity 
to clean this up.

I think I vote for the second option, renaming 'git branch --track' 
to 'git branch --upstream', and s/@{tracked}/@{upstream}/.


Have fun! :)

...Johan

[1]: And also tracked and untracked files, although I believe that is 
unambiguous in most cases.


-- 
Johan Herland, [off-list ref]
www.herland.net