Re: [PATCH v2] branch/checkout --track: Ensure that upstream branch is indeed a branch

[Martin von Zweigbergk <martin.von.zweigbergk@gmail.com>]

On Thu, 17 Feb 2011, Johan Herland wrote:

> When creating a new branch using the --track option, we must make sure that
> we don't try to set an upstream that does not make sense to follow (using
> 'git pull') or update (using 'git push'). The current code checks against
> using HEAD as upstream (since tracking a symref doesn't make sense). However,
> tracking a tag doesn't make sense either. Indeed, tracking _any_ ref that is
> not a (local or remote) branch doesn't make sense, and should be disallowed.
> 
> This patch achieves this by checking that the ref we're trying to --track
> resides within refs/heads/* or refs/remotes/*. This new check replaces the
> previous check against HEAD.

In some workflows (e.g. Linux kernel, IIRC), it is recommended to base
your work on a tag. Is it worth considering that people might use a
tag as upstream for such cases or would that be considered abuse of
the "upstream" concept? It could make sense to set an upstream to
point to a tag for reference and to be able to use e.g. 'rebase -i
@{u}', 'git log @{u}..' and similar.


/Martin