Re: Question about "git pull --rebase"

Nanako Shiraishi [off-list ref] writes:

Quoting Francis Moreau [off-list ref]

quoted

Let's say I'm on a branch called 'foo'.
...
    $ git pull --rebase origin master:foo

With this command line, you are asking:

 1) Please first fetch master from origin and update the local 
    'foo' with it, but please fail if this doesn't fast forward;

 2) If the first step was successful, please rebase the current 
    branch on top of that commit.

If your current branch 'foo' doesn't fast forward, the first step 
should fail, and that is the failure you saw.

Your request doesn't make any sense. The first step would succeed 
only when your 'foo' doesn't have anything to replay on 'master' 
from origin, and the second step either isn't executed (when 'foo' 
has some commits), or it doesn't do anything (when 'foo' doesn't 
have any commit).

quoted

    $ git pull --rebase origin master

With this command line, you are asking:

 1) Please first fetch master from origin, but don't store it anywhere;

 2) Then on top of that fetched commit, please rebase the current branch.

That is a much saner request.

I see thanks.

Actually I've been confused by the following part of the git-pull man
page:

    A parameter <ref> without a colon is equivalent to <ref>: when
    pulling/fetching, so it merges <ref> into the current branch without
    storing the remote branch anywhere locally

So it sounds that both of the pull commands were equivalent whereas
they're not.

-- 
Francis