From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Subject: Re: Friendly refspecs
Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 23:48:23 -0400
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References: <20080409101428.GA2637@elte.hu> <20080409145758.GB20874@sigill.intra.peff.net> <20080409200836.GA19248@mithlond> <20080409203453.GA10370@sigill.intra.peff.net> <20080409222500.GB19248@mithlond> <20080409225112.GB12103@sigill.intra.peff.net> <20080413093102.GC12107@mithlond.arda.local>
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Cc: Daniel Barkalow <barkalow@iabervon.org>, git@vger.kernel.org
To: Teemu Likonen <tlikonen@iki.fi>
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On Sun, Apr 13, 2008 at 12:31:02PM +0300, Teemu Likonen wrote:

> There is still one thing (at least) that I don't quite understand. It's
> about "git push". When I do
> 
>   $ git push <remote> <branch>
> 
> the refs/heads/<branch> is updated or created on the remote side. But if
> I do
> 
>   $ git push <remote> <branch1>:<branch2>
> 
> the refs/heads/<branch2> is not automatically created. Why there is need
> to say "<branch1>:refs/heads/<branch2>" to make it work if <branch2>
> does not exist? The 'git push' manual says something vague about branch
> not matching (?). What does it mean?

This happens because "git push <remote> <branch>" is expanded locally to
"git push <remote> <branch>:<branch>", but <branch> is first expanded
into refs/heads/<branch>.

The latter uses the explicit refspec <branch2> which doesn't get
expanded, since it doesn't exist at all, and so we can't deduce the type
(e.g., refs/heads versus refs/tags).

ISTR some discussion in the past few months about using the type of
<branch1> to guess the type of <branch2>, but it seems not to have gone
anywhere.

Daniel, were you working on this?

-Peff