Re: How to check new commit availability without full fetch?

On Sun, 10 Jan 2010, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Nicolas Pitre [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

quoted

I am sure I am not the only one with such an itch.

Maybe you are. There is very little point knowing that the remote repo 
has new commits if you're not going to fetch them, so I don't understand 
why you need this.

A feel good factor is in play?  IOW, "I am short of time, so I won't be
able to really afford to 'git pull' and test the result of re-integrating
my changes to what happened on the other end.  If I can learn that there
is nothing happening over there, then I won't have to do anything and know
that I am up to date."

Just do a fetch then.  If the fetch progress display looks like if it is 
going to take a while then just interrupt it and go home.  If the fetch 
looks trivial then just merge it.  In any case, the "feel good" factor 
can't be that great by only knowing if the remote has changed or not.  

Well maybe if it hasn't changed then you know right away how to feel 
about it (equally with a fetch in that case), and if the remote is 
indeed different then you can't tell whether the changes are trivial or 
not without actually fetching them.


Nicolas