On Tue, Feb 01, 2011 at 06:25:55PM +0100, Ivan Kanis wrote: > When I pull a specific branch from a repository I get in a state where > git thinks I am ahead of the branch by one commit. The use case is a > programmer that doesn't want to pull all the branches of the server. > > I have made a small script to reproduce the problem: > > ---- > #!/bin/sh > > rm -rf foo bar > git --version > mkdir foo > cd foo > git init > echo foo > foo.txt > git add foo.txt > git commit -am"foo" > git checkout -b branch > cd .. > git clone foo bar > cd foo > echo bar > foo.txt > git commit -am"bar" > cd .. > cd bar > git pull origin branch > git status > git branch -rv > ---- > > I get the following output: > > ---- > git version 1.7.3.5 > Initialized empty Git repository in /home/ivan/tmp/foo/.git/ > [master (root-commit) eefa065] foo > 1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-) > create mode 100644 foo.txt > Switched to a new branch 'branch' > Cloning into bar... > done. > [branch 7ecd065] bar > 1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-) > remote: Counting objects: 5, done. > remote: Total 3 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0) > Unpacking objects: 100% (3/3), done. > From /home/ivan/tmp/foo > * branch branch -> FETCH_HEAD > Updating eefa065..7ecd065 > Fast-forward > foo.txt | 2 +- > 1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-) > # On branch master > # Your branch is ahead of 'origin/master' by 1 commit. > # > nothing to commit (working directory clean) > origin/HEAD -> origin/master > origin/branch eefa065 foo > origin/master eefa065 foo > ---- > > I expected to not be ahead of origin/master and that origin/branch > points to 7ecd065. Is this a bug? I'm not really sure about your expectation as you did not clearly articulate them, so it seems there are two points to touch here... The first one is that you seem to maintain a wrong idea about what happens when you do `git pull origin branch`. It appears you assume this action is supposed to first update the local branch "remotes/origin/branch" and then merge it to the locally checked out branch. The truth is that specifying a branch in this way to git-pull (or git-fetch, which is called by git-pull) is a special case -- it means that no corresponding local ref is updated, and the fetched line of history is directly merged into the checked out branch right after fetching (see the git-fetch manual and the EXAMPLES section in the git-pull manual). In your particular case you're merging remote branch "branch" which is one commit ahead of remote "master" to the locally checked branch "master" which is, at the moment, the same as the same-named remote branch. Consequently, after merging "branch" (which results in fast-forward) your local branch "master" starts to be one commit ahead of its remote counterpart; no local branches beyond this one are updated. The second point is less clear/more complicated. At first, it's not clear whether you wanted to have the remote branch "branch" become the active local branch during the cloning process, or "master" (in your case "master" became the active branch). On the one hand, you explicitly branched "branch" off "master" right before cloning (updating the first repo's HEAD ref) which hints you intended that branch to be default in the clone. On the other hand, while the documentation says the default branch in the clone is the one listed in the HEAD ref of the source repository, in my tests using Git (1.7.2.x in Debian and msysgit 1.7.3.x), in cases like yours the destination repository ends up having the "master" branch as the default one, not the branch from the HEAD ref; to make this work, the branch listed in the HEAD ref should have received at least one commit after forking. I suspect the problem might be in that such a branch freshly cloned off "master" points to the same commit object's name which might confuse Git. This, in my eyes, might indeed display a bug. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html