Re: [PATCH] git fetch one tag only

cheng renquan [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

There is a convenience short-hand "tag <tagname>", i.e.

 git fetch 3rd-repo tag the-tag-name

that is equivalent to

 git fetch 3rd-repo refs/tags/the-tag-name:refs/tags/the-tag-name

So I do not think your patch is necessary for your use case, and
obviously it will break other people's use case where they just
want to fetch (and inspect what is left in FETCH_HEAD) but do not
want to store.

No, I tried what you said but it doesn't work as expected:
...
[linus-git] $ git fetch -v --dry-run linux-stable tag v3.4.1 |& head
From git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable
 = [up to date]      v3.4.1     -> v3.4.1
 * [new tag]         latest     -> latest
 * [new tag]         v2.6.12.1  -> v2.6.12.1
 * [new tag]         v2.6.12.2  -> v2.6.12.2
[...]
maybe I'd better to fix that?

Ahh, that is auto-following of tags.  Read up on that in "git fetch"
manual page, and there is an option to decline auto-following also
described.

The (current) rule is to grab all tags that reference commits you
are fetching *IF* you are storing any refs resulting from the fetch
in your refs/ namespace, and "tag v3.4.1" obviously asks for storing
that tag at refs/tags/v3.4.1 in your repository, so it is expected
that the auto-following kicks in.

It is a separate matter if we should add some special case to further
reduce the cases where auto-following happens. I personally do not
think any change is needed.