Hello Mark, On 23 Nov 2015, at 12:04, Marc Strapetz <marc.strapetz@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > There is a strange "branch --set-upstream-to" failure for "clones" which haven't been created using "git clone" but constructed using "git init", "git remote add" and "git fetch". > > Following script first creates a "main" repository and then constructs the clone. Finally, in the clone branches origin/1 and origin/2 will be present, however it's not possible to invoke "git branch --set-upstream-to" for origin/2 (it works fine for origin/1). > > I guess the behavior is related to following line in .git/config: > > fetch = refs/heads/1:refs/remotes/origin/1 > > However, I don't understand what's the problem for Git here? Definitely the error "starting point 'origin/2' is not a branch" is wrong. > That is indeed the issue. The configuration which is stored in the configuration is a remote+branch pair. If there is no fetch refspec configured which would create the ‘origin/2’ remote-tracking branch, the command does not know which remote and branch that would correspond to. If you had ‘refs/heads/2:refs/remotes/origin/2’ then it would know, but other remote-tracking branches (e.g. ‘origin/3’) would still have an unknown source. The error message is indeed bogus; it’s likely one of the functions assuming how it’s going to be used. cmn -- 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