Derrick Stolee <stolee@xxxxxxxxx> writes:
> On 4/1/2021 2:49 PM, Tom Saeger wrote:
>> I've recently setup git maintenance and noticed prefetch task
>> fetches ALL remote refs (well not tags) and does not honor
>> remote fetch config settings.
>
> This is intentional. The point is to get the latest objects
> without modifying any local copies of refs. You still need
> to run "git fetch" manually to update the refs, but that
> should be faster because you have most of the objects already
> in your copy of the repository.
You answered only half of the question, I think.
The plain vanilla refspec after you clone would be
[remote "origin"]
fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*
and "maintenance prefetch" intentionally redirect the destination
part away from refs/remotes/origin/ to avoid disrupting the
reference to @{upstream} etc. that are used locally. And
intentionally doing so is good.
But imagine you are tracking my 'todo' branch which has nothing
common with the history of Git. You'd have
[remote "origin"]
url = git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/git/git.git
fetch = +refs/heads/todo:refs/remotes/origin/todo
If "maintenance prefetch" does "+refs/heads/*:refs/prefetch/origin/*",
you'd end up the history of Git, which is not interesting for you who
are only interested in the 'todo' branch (to be checked out in the
Meta subdirectory to use Meta/cook script or read Meta/whats-cooking.txt
file).
So, redirecting the right-hand of configured refspec is a good idea;
not copying the left-hand of configured refspec, and unconditionally
using "refs/heads/*" is not.
