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From:   Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
To:     Philip Oakley <philipoakley@iee.email>
Cc:     GitList <git@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v1] config/branch: state that <name>.merge is the remote ref
References: <20191016112822.1701-1-philipoakley@iee.email>
Date:   Fri, 18 Oct 2019 10:32:20 +0900
In-Reply-To: <20191016112822.1701-1-philipoakley@iee.email> (Philip Oakley's
        message of "Wed, 16 Oct 2019 12:28:22 +0100")
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Philip Oakley <philipoakley@iee.email> writes:

>  branch.<name>.merge::
>  	Defines, together with branch.<name>.remote, the upstream branch
> -	for the given branch. It tells 'git fetch'/'git pull'/'git rebase' which
> +	for the given branch. It defines the branch name _on the remote_,
> +	which may be different from the local branch name.

While I do agree with the goal of make things more clear, I'd avoid
being overly redundant and giving irrelevant information (e.g. the
copy you have locally may be made under arbitrary name that is
different from the name used at the remote).  After all, the users
do not even need to know about the remote-tracking branch to
understand this naming mechanism.

Perhaps something along this line instead:

    The name of the branch at the remote `branch.<name>.remote` that
    is used as the upstream branch for the given branch.  It tells
    `git fetch`, etc., which branch to merge and ...