To resurrect a misleading mention removed in the previous step, add a section to explain how the remote-tracking configuration interacts with the refspecs given as the command-line arguments. Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@xxxxxxxxx> --- Documentation/git-fetch.txt | 43 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 43 insertions(+) diff --git a/Documentation/git-fetch.txt b/Documentation/git-fetch.txt index 06106b9..d09736a 100644 --- a/Documentation/git-fetch.txt +++ b/Documentation/git-fetch.txt @@ -51,6 +51,49 @@ include::pull-fetch-param.txt[] include::urls-remotes.txt[] +CONFIGURED REMOTE-TRACKING BRANCHES +----------------------------------- + +You would often interact with the same remote repository by +regularly and repeatedly fetching from it. In order to keep track +of the progress of such a remote repository, `git fetch` allows you +to configure `remote.<repository>.fetch` configuration variable. + +Typically such a variable may look like this: + +------------------------------------------------ +[remote "origin"] + fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/* +------------------------------------------------ + +This configuration is used in two ways: + +* When `git fetch` command is run without specifying what branches + and/or tags to fetch on the command line, e.g. `git fetch origin` + or `git fetch`, the values configured to this variable are used as + the refspecs to be used to fetch. The example above will fetch + all branches that exist on the `origin` (i.e. any ref that matches + the left-hand side of the value, `refs/heads/*`) and update the + corresponding remote-tracking branches in `refs/remotes/origin/*` + hierarchy. + +* When `git fetch` command is run with explicit branches and/or tags + to fetch on the command line, e.g. `git fetch origin master`, the + <refspec> given on the command line (e.g. `master` in the example, + which is a short-hand for `master:`, which in turn would mean + "fetch the 'master' branch but I do not explicitly say what + remote-tracking branch to update with it from the command line") + determines what are to be fetched, and the example command will + fetch _only_ the 'master' branch. The values of the variable are + used to map the branch (i.e. `master`) to determine which + remote-tracking branch, if any, is updated. When used in this + way, the values of the configuration variable do not have any + effect in deciding _what_ gets fetched (i.e. the values are not + used as refspecs when the command-line lists refspecs); they are + only used to decide _where_ the refs that are fetched are stored + by acting as a mapping. + + EXAMPLES -------- -- 2.0.0-511-g1433423 -- 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