Re: [RFC/PATCH 2/3] pull: trivial cleanups

On Thu, May 16, 2013 at 4:54 AM, Ramkumar Ramachandra
[off-list ref] wrote:

Felipe Contreras wrote:

quoted

% git fetch origin 'refs/tags/*:refs/tags/*' 'refs/heads/*:refs/heads/*'
fatal: Refusing to fetch into current branch
refs/heads/fc/fast-export/cleanup of non-bare repository
fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly

That's because your HEAD is pointing to something under refs/heads/*:
it would work otherwise.  When I'm developing on my personal branch, I
sometimes do 'git fetch origin master:master +pu:pu +next:next', and
it works as expected.  When on master branch, I can't git fetch origin
master:master and this is a cute safety feature.

Now you know what's the problem.

Either way, I think it's a bad practice to fetch directly into
refs/heads/*: you should really be fetching to refs/remotes and then
merging your changes in.  I do want shortcuts though, which is why I'm
interested in fixing pull: there is nothing to fix in fetch as far as
I'm concerned.

It doesn't matter if you think it's a bad practice or not, 'git push
--mirror' works, and it's possible to update a branch even if HEAD is
point to it. There should be a possibility to do the same with 'git
fetch'.

Right now the user is forced to do something like:

	git checkout -q -b tmp &&
	git fetch origin 'refs/tags/*:refs/tags/*' 'refs/heads/*:refs/heads/*' &&
	git checkout -q @{-1} &&
	git branch -q -D tmp 2> /dev/null

Which doesn't seem to be quite right.

-- 
Felipe Contreras