On Tue, Feb 4, 2025 at 1:08 PM D. Ben Knoble [off-list ref] wrote:

On Mon, Feb 3, 2025 at 7:28 PM Bram van Oosterhout
[off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

Ahhhh, this thread explains my confusion when, even though git locally
tells me my branch is "up to date", a fetch demonstrates the branch is
not up to date.

Which begs the question: Why does git say: "Your branch is up to date
..." if at best it can say: "Your
branch MIGHT BE up to date with ..."?

Well, the branch _is_ up to date with your remote-tracking branch [1]
origin/main; that doesn't mean the tracking branch is up-to-date with
the repository origin's branch main!

I find it helpful to break the notion for newcomers early on that
origin/main somehow is "equal to" the repository named by origin's
main branch. Git (mostly) only communicates with remote repos when you
fetch, push, or, pull—in other words (and this bit may be more for
Manuel), try to reinforce that things Git knows locally are only local
and not inherently tied to other repositories. Learning this
distributed lesson proves hard in my experience but explains a lot
about the reality of how Git operates.

Exceptions to the "remote communication" rule I can think of that
probably don't need to clutter things for beginners:
- git-maintenance has pre-fetching as a default task
- git ls-remote lists remote refs by communicating with the remote

quoted

I have learned not to rely on the message and come to expect
(sometimes nasty) surprises when I return to a project after a few
months,

Bram

And thus `git fetch [--all]` because a part of your typical workflow,
or something like `git pull --rebase [origin [main]]` before pushing.

Thanks all for the education.

I have always read the message "Your branch is up to date with
'origin/main'." as
"Your branch is up to date with _main_ at _origin_", with _origin_
being the remote repo.

I now understand it says:
Your branch is up to date _according to_ the information available at
.git/refs/remotes/origin/main.
Since that is a local file , I can reasonably expect the info to be
stale when I return to my repo after 6 months and I should do a git
fetch to assess the situation

Thanks again. Bram

[1]: https://git-scm.com/docs/gitglossary#Documentation/gitglossary.txt-aiddefremotetrackingbrancharemote-trackingbranch

--
D. Ben Knoble