Re: Question about "git pull --rebase"

On Sun, Nov 15, 2009 at 9:32 PM, Johan 't Hart [off-list ref] wrote:

Junio C Hamano schreef:

quoted

Johan 't Hart [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

quoted

I've been somehow confused by the git-pull man page, which says:

 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

quoted

Thanks for clearing it up.

I was puzzled by the above pointing-finger because I wanted to see where a
misinformation originated from to fix it at the source.  But still don't
see anything wrong with it.

My guess is that he was confused by '<ref>:' not meaning '<ref>:<ref>'. But
I can't speak for him ofcource :)

Well, I don't remember how I started to think that:

<src>:

was equivalent to

<src>:<current-branch>

so, assuming I'm on branch 'foo':

$ git pull --rebase origin master:

was equivalent to

$ git pull --rebase origin master:foo

hence my confusion, which certainly due to my lack of attention
(sorry) when reading the man page.

Refspecs confused me too at the beginning... But knowing more and more about
git, it seems that this part of the docs look OK to me.. At most an example
might make things a little more clear, but I doubt it is necessary.

Perhaps, the definition of a refspec with an empty string for <dst>
might be clearer if defined on its own. For example, doing this in the
git-pull man page:

      <refspec>
           The format of a <refspec> parameter is an ....

           The remote ref that matches <src> is fetched,

                  if <dst> is not empty string, the local ref that
matches it is fast
                  forwarded using <src>. If the optional plus + is
used, the local ref is
                  updated even if it does not result in a fast forward update.

                  if <dst> is an empty string the fetched <src> is
merged into the
                  current branch without updating any local refs. In
this case the
                  optional + has no meaning.

           Note
                  ....

           Some short-cut notations are also supported.

               . A parameter <src> (<ref> without the ':<dst>' part)
is equivalent
                 to '<src>:' (a ref with an empty string for <dst>).


-- 
Francis