Hi Ævar,
Sorry for chiming in late. I have a couple of thoughts:
> (
> cd /tmp &&
> rm -rf tbdiff &&
> git clone g...@github.com:trast/tbdiff.git &&
> cd tbdiff &&
> git branch -m topic &&
> git checkout master
> )
>
> That will output:
>
> Branch 'master' set up to track remote branch 'master' from 'origin'.
> Switched to a new branch 'master'
I thought master is already there after the clone operation and
you'd merely switch back to the local branch that was created at
clone time?
$ git clone g...@github.com:trast/tbdiff.git && cd tbdiff
$ git branch
* master
$ cat .git/config
...
[branch "master"]
remote = origin
merge = refs/heads/master
But the observation is right, we get that message. When do we
do the setup for the master branch specifically?
>
> But as soon as a new remote is added (e.g. just to inspect something
> from someone else) the DWIMery goes away:
>
> (
> cd /tmp &&
> rm -rf tbdiff &&
> git clone g...@github.com:trast/tbdiff.git &&
> cd tbdiff &&
> git branch -m topic &&
> git remote add avar g...@github.com:avar/tbdiff.git &&
> git fetch avar &&
> git checkout master
> )
>
> Will output (without the advice output added earlier in this series):
>
> error: pathspec 'master' did not match any file(s) known to git.
>
> The new checkout.defaultRemote config allows me to say that whenever
> that ambiguity comes up I'd like to prefer "origin", and it'll still
> work as though the only remote I had was "origin".
>
> Also adjust the advice.checkoutAmbiguousRemoteBranchName message to
> mention this new config setting to the user, the full output on my
> git.git is now (the last paragraph is new):
>
> $ ./git --exec-path=$PWD checkout master
> error: pathspec 'master' did not match any file(s) known to git.
> hint: The argument 'master' matched more than one remote tracking branch.
> hint: We found 26 remotes with a reference that matched. So we fell back
> hint: on trying to resolve the argument as a path, but failed there too!
> hint:
> hint: Perhaps you meant fully qualify the branch name? E.g. origin/<name>
s/meant fully/meant to fully/
s/? E.g./?\nFor example/
> hint: instead of <name>?
In builtin/submodule--helper.c there is get_default_remote() which also
hardcodes "origin". I think that is a safe thing to do.
> hint:
> hint: If you'd like to always have checkouts of 'master' prefer one
> remote,
> hint: e.g. the 'origin' remote, consider setting
> checkout.defaultRemote=origin
> hint: in your config. See the 'git-config' manual page for details.
his new setting elevates one remote over all others, which may
be enough for most setups and not confusing, too.
Consider the following:
git clone https://kernel.googlesource.com/pub/scm/git/git && cd git
git remote add gitster https://github.com/gitster/git
git remote add interesting-patches https://github.com/avar/git
git remote add my-github https://github.com/stefanbeller/git
git checkout master
This probably means I want to have origin/master (from kernel.org)
git checkout ab/checkout-implicit-remote
This probably wants to have it from gitster/ (as it is not found on kernel.org);
I am not sure if it would want to look at interesting-patches/ that mirrors
github, but probably if it were not to be found at gitster.
So maybe we rather want a setup to give a defined priority for
the search order:
git config dwim.remoteSearchOrder origin gitster avar
Stepping back a bit, there is already an order in the config file
for the remotes, and that order is used for example for 'fetch --all'.
I wonder if we want to take that order? (Or are the days of hand
editing the config over and this is too arcane? We would need a
config command to re order remotes). Then we could just have a
boolean switch to use the config order on ambiguity.
Although you might want to have a different order for fetching
and looking for the right checkout.
> I considered splitting this into checkout.defaultRemote and
> worktree.defaultRemote, but it's probably less confusing to break our
> own rules that anything shared between config should live in core.*
> than have two config settings, and I couldn't come up with a short
> name under core.* that made sense (core.defaultRemoteForCheckout?).
core.dwimRemote ? It's a bit cryptic, though.
> See also 70c9ac2f19 ("DWIM "git checkout frotz" to "git checkout -b
> frotz origin/frotz"", 2009-10-18) which introduced this DWIM feature
> to begin with, and 4e85333197 ("worktree: make add <path> <branch>
> dwim", 2017-11-26) which added it to git-worktree.
Stefan
