Andy Parkins wrote: > Without any specification in the .git/config file, git-pull will execute > "git-pull origin"; which in turn defaults to pull from the first "pull" > definition for the remote, "origin". > > This is a difficult set of defaults to track for a new user, and it's > difficult to see what tells git to do this (especially when it is > actually hard-coded behaviour). To ameliorate this slightly, this patch > explicitly specifies the default behaviour during a clone using the > "branch" section of the config. > > For example, a clone of a typical repository would create a .git/config > containing: > [remote "origin"] > url = proto://host/repo.git > fetch = refs/heads/master:refs/remotes/origin/master > [branch "master"] > remote = origin > merge = refs/heads/master > > The [branch "master"] section is such that there is no change to the > functionality of git-pull, but that functionality is now explicitly > documented. This doesn't help newbies if they do "git pull" on branch other than "master". Git would fetch (a) from default remote "origin" (which can be unexpected a bit) (b) into current branch (which can be very unexpected for newbie) (c) the first branch in remote (which can be very unexpected). The part (c) could be ameliorated (especially when globbing/regexp matching would get into 'master') with "Merge:" line in remotes file and equivalent remote.<name>.merge which would specify explicitely the branch to be merged, instead of using first branch. > Signed-off-by: Andy Parkins <andyparkins@xxxxxxxxx> > --- > This is really to help newbies. By explicitly documenting the default > behaviour, it makes it clearer what is going on. It also means no routing > through documentation to find out what config option needs changing. Very nice. > It's possible that we would want to remove the default behaviour entirely > if there is no "branch" definition in the config. That would prevent > accidents by users who don't know what pull does fully yet. Perhaps protected by config option and/or pull option... or perhaps not. Refuse pulling into current branch if it doesn.t have branch.<name>.remote matching current remote and doesn't have branch.<name>.merge entry, unless of course refspec is provided. -- Jakub Narebski Warsaw, Poland ShadeHawk on #git - 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