I've recently been forced back into using git-svn, and while I was at it, I noticed that git-svn generally behaves a lot better when it is initialized using the --prefix option. For example, I make a standard-layout svn clone: $ git svn clone -s https://svn.company.com/repos/project-foo/ .. and end up with this .gitconfig: [svn-remote "svn"] url = https://svn.company.com/repos/ fetch = project-foo/trunk:refs/remotes/trunk branches = project-foo/branches/*:refs/remotes/* tags = project-foo/tags/*:refs/remotes/tags/* And my remote branches looks like this: remotes/trunk remotes/feat-bar Now, let's say I want to work on the feat-bar branch, so I attempt to create a tracking branch by the same name: $ git checkout feat-bar # will detach head $ git checkout remotes/feat-bar # will detach head $ git checkout -t remotes/feat-bar # fatal: Missing branch name; try -b $ git checkout -tb remotes/feat-bar # Branch remotes/feat-bar set up to track local branch master. Well, that's not what I wanted.. So I end up doing it the good old-fashioned way: $ git checkout -tb feat-bar remotes/feat-bar # works Now I am up and rolling, but I get this warning with every checkout or rebase: warning: refname 'feat-bar' is ambiguous. So, let's see what happens when I create the svn clone using a --prefix=mirror/ instead. Here's the config: [svn-remote "svn"] url = https://svn.company.com/repos/ fetch = project-foo/trunk:refs/remotes/mirror/trunk branches = project-foo/branches/*:refs/remotes/mirror/* tags = project-foo/tags/*:refs/remotes/mirror/tags/* Here are my remote branches: remotes/mirror/trunk remotes/mirror/feat-bar Let's create the tracking branch: $ git checkout feat-bar # Branch feat-bar set up to track remote branch feat-bar from mirror. Voila, worked on the first try. And no more warnings about ambiguous refnames. So now my question is: If using a prefix is so healthy for git's branch tracking conventions, why doesn't git-svn default to use some prefix like 'origin' or something when initializing a git svn clone? The examples were made using 1.8.1.2 on OSX by the way. -- 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