Re: [orion-dev] "Recent commits on origin/master"

[John Arthorne <John_Arthorne@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I understand this is confusing, but this
is standard Git branch naming, so at least all Git users should be confused
equally...  "origin/master" does not refer to the branch
"master" on the remote server. "origin/master" is a
*local* branch that is used to track changes on the remote. Git makes this
even more confusing by calling this is a "remote tracking branch",
even though it is a branch in your local repository. The distinction is
subtle but important... operations such as "git checkout origin/master"
and "git reset origin/master" are purely local operations between
two branches in your local repository.

The perception of that mini-log being
useless might depend on how big a team you work on. I know working on a
repository shared with many people, I find it essential to be able to browse
through the incoming changes before I merge them. A common workflow for
me is: 1) Perform a fetch. 2) Browse the origin/master log and review incoming
changes. If I decide they don't conflict with my changes or destabilize
work that I am in the middle of doing, I will then merge. If you are performing
a merge against the actual remote repository then you can't really know
what you are merging... there is a risk you will merge something that was
pushed after the log was last fetched.

So, I think we should not attempt to
represent "origin/master" as being identical to the remote repository,
or do automatic fetching under the covers. This will be confusing for anyone
who already knows Git, or anyone who is reading Git documentation. I am
ok with the idea of the user being able to configure automatic fetching
on some schedule if they want to, as long as it is something that they
explicity opt into and have a clear way to see what is happening and configure
it.

John A

John J Barton <johnjbarton@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent by: orion-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx

11/21/2011 12:27 PM

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Subject	[orion-dev] "Recent commits on origin/master"

On git/git-status.html the bottom half is labeled

Recent commits on origin/master

I believe this title is not correct, or at least it is confusing. I
think of "origin/master" as the remote repo. The content in this
section a list of the local replica of origin/master (or so I imagine,
it's what |git fetch| updates).

But rather than changing the title, I suggest changing the content.
The vast majority of the time a dev will want to understand the remote
state, not the local replica of the remote state.  With the limited
git command set available through the UI, I'm unsure if we can do
anything with the local replica other than merge it. So between the
time we merge and the next time we look at the git status page, the
content in the bottom area is pointless. It only shows the log
messages we have already merged into our working branch. We can't
compare it to our commits because it's already out of date.

So a concrete suggestion: asynchronously issue git fetch and update
the bottom area 1) every time we update git status, 2) once every 5
minutes.

jjb
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