Re: Question regarding git fetch

[Avery Pennarun <apenwarr@gmail.com>]

On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 4:21 PM, Eric Raible<raible@gmail.com> wrote:
> Avery Pennarun <apenwarr <at> gmail.com> writes:
>
>> Git currently promises that your refs/remotes/* branches will
>> never be updated unless you explicitly request it, even if you're
>> fetching, merging, and pulling other stuff.
>
> So your claim is that "git fetch central" is somehow more
> explicit than "git fetch central master"?

It is, because there's nothing else you could possibly do with it.  It
fetches too many things, so you don't know their names (other than the
ones it puts into refs/remotes/*).

So it's not exactly that it's more explicit - in fact it's rather
confusing and non-explicit that the three-parameter version does
something almost entirely different from the four-parameter one - but
the three-parameter version is at least completely unambiguous.

> Either way, AFAICT it seems purely historical that
> "git fetch central master" doesn't update remotes/central.

This seems true to me.

Have fun,

Avery