Subject: Re: fetch <repo> <branch>:<branch> fetches tags?

From: "Shawn O. Pearce" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2008 23:19:29 -0500

Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]> wrote:
> Brandon Casey <[email-masked]> writes:
> >
> > But, I did not expect these to fetch tags:
> >
> >    git fetch <repo> <branch>:<branch>
> >    git pull <repo> <branch>:<branch>
> 
> Sigh... that matches my expectation.
> 
> Did we break it when we overhauled "git fetch", or was this an
> independent "improvement" that happened long before that?

I think during the git-fetch builtin marathon this got implemented,
but probably as a feature masquerading as a bug fix and we didn't
notice the regression.

The theory behind the expectation here is if we are fetching the
object to a tracking ref then we probably want to watch it in
the future.  If we want to watch it and tag following was allowed,
and we are missing a tag, we should follow the tag if we have the
object graph under the tag complete.

Now what should:

	git pull <repo> <branch1>:<branch1> <branch2>

do, especially if <branch2> is referring to an object that you don't
already have, that object also isn't reachable through <branch1>,
but <branch2>^0 is the target of a tag <tag2> that you don't have?
Should we get the tag anyway?

Personally I'd expect us to skip the tag pointing at <branch2>^0,
based upon my description above, but I have a feeling we'd follow
it anyway, as tag following was enabled and at least one item in
the fetchspec provided asked for storage to a tracking ref and we
have <tag2>^{} complete.

Of course even if we didn't follow that tag right away a future:

	git fetch <repo> <branch1>:<branch1>

might cause us to get the tag anyway, as <branch2>^0 is now reachable
through HEAD, due to the implicit git-merge we ran above.  ;-)

-- 
Shawn.