On Wed, Apr 9, 2008 at 10:57 AM, Jeff King <peff@peff.net> wrote:
quoted text
>  >  $ git-fetch x86/latest
[...]
quoted text
>   git-fetch <options> <repository> <refspec>
[...]
quoted text
>  >  $ git-pull x86 latest
[...]
quoted text
>   git pull ~/linux-2.6-x86.git latest

My co-workers frequently get confused by this too.  The problem is
that "x86/latest" is a locally existing remote branch ref, while "x86
latest" is supposed to be a branch ref on a remote system.

I think the real problem here is that you can't refer to a
remote+branch as a single "word".  If you could, then people could
just learn to use that everywhere and never get confused.

For example, in svn you can talk about
svn+ssh://reposerver/path/to/repo/branches/foo@1234; it's a single
"word" that refers to a particular revision on a particular branch of
a particular server.  It therefore makes sense to talk about copying
from one branch to another, etc, using exactly one word for the source
and one for the destination.

Imagine if "git pull ~/linux/2.6-x86.git:latest" would work; then it
could mean exactly the same thing as "git merge
~/linux/2.6-x86.git:latest" (which would presumably switch to 'pull'
mode automatically).  Or even "git diff master..x86:latest", which
could diff my local master with an auto-fetched x86:latest.

Naturally we'd have to find a new punctuation mark for this, since all
the obvious ones are already used :)

Have fun,

Avery
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