Subject: Re: [PATCH v4] remote: allow specifying refs to prefetch

From: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 05 Nov 2024 16:39:06 -0800

Shubham Kanodia <[email-masked]> writes:

> I don't have a particular preference here, and this was discussed in
> an earlier thread
> where Junio opined (https://lore.kernel.org/git/[email-masked]/—
>
>> I agree that it is the right place to configure this as attributes
>> to remotes.  It would make it handy if we could give a catch-all
>> configuration, though.  For example:
>>
>> [remote "origin"]
>>       prefetch = true
>>        prefetchref = refs/heads/* refs/tags/*
>> [remote "*"]
>>        prefetch = false
>>
>> may toggle prefetch off for all remotes, except that the tags and
>> the local branches of the remote "origin" are prefetched.  Instead
>> of a multi-value configuration variable (like remote.*.fetch) where
>> we need to worry about clearing convention, we can use a regular
>> "last one wins" variable that is whitespace separated patterns, as
>> such a pattern can never have a whitespace in it.
> which is what my implementation is based on.

I am fine with space separated list or multi-valued variable.  The
only difference is that with multi-valued list, we'd need to worry
about ensuring that we have a way to "clear" the values we have seen
so far.  It has plenty of precedence and is not a rocket science.
The above, if I recall correctly, was solely about the need for
"catch-all default" (aka "*" remote) and not about multi-value vs
space separated last-one-wins value at all.  IOW, the above could
have been

    [remote "origin"]
	prefetch = true
	prefetchref = refs/heads/*
	prefetchref = refs/tags/*
    [remote "*"]
	prefetch = false

and conveyed exactly what I wanted to say in the message you quoted.

In any case, I somehow thought that we discarded the arrangement
with "*" wildcard as unworkable.  If I remember the discussion
before I left correctly, didn't it turn out to be troublesome to
have [remote "*"] section because existing code would need to
enumerate configured remotes, and we do not want to see "*" listed?
If we found a workable solution to that while I was away, that would
be great, but I haven't looked at what this latest round of the
series does to solve it (yet).  Perhaps teaching "git remote" and
"git fetch --all" to skip "*" while enumerating remotes was
sufficient?  I dunno.

Thanks.