"Philip Oakley" <philipoakley@xxxxxxx> writes:
>> All of the above are expected and working as designed. Remote
>> tracking branches are local _copies_ of what you have over there at
>> the remote repository. The latter is the authoritative version, and
>> you asked "ls-remote" to go over the network to view them.
>>
> Is there a definitive naming convention for the two types of 'remote
> branch'?
>
> IIRC (somewhere) the 'tracking' term was to be deprecated, though it is
> still in common use. It is usually only the context that clarifies if it
> is the local or the distant copy/repo.
That is somewhat different from what I recall:
- "refs/remotes/$there/$that" is a copy of $that branch at the
remote $there; we call that a "remote tracking branch".
When people say "remote branch", they often mean $that branch at
the remote $there, not your local copy of it.
When you say "remote tracking branch", you are talking about
something you locally have to track the corresponding "remote
branch". This use is not deprecated at all. That is the only
sane way to clarify which one of the two you are talking about.
- If your branch "foo" always integrates with branch "bar" at the
remote "xyzzy", you would often run
git pull xyzzy bar
git pull --rebase xyzzy bar
after running "git chekcout foo". You may even have this in your
per-repository configuration:
[branch "foo"]
remote = xyzzy
merge = refs/heads/bar
In such a situation, some people (used to) say that "foo tracks
bar from xyzzy". While such a colloquial use is perfectly fine
when it is clear that "foo" being discussed is your local branch,
the verb "track" in that sentence is used to mean an entirely
different kind of relationship between your "remotes/xyzzy/bar"
and the branch "bar" at remote "xyzzy", where the former is the
"remote tracking branch" for the latter, leading to confusion.
This use of 'track' is what is discouraged these days.
I think we call the latter @{upstream} of "foo" these days.
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