How to ignore some branches/tags being copied to local git when do git fetch --all

Question

I have many remotes added to my git. Each remote is a repository for one developer. Every day I fetch --all to see any new branches they create that are ready to review.

However, developers can push "private" branches to the remote. Say, all branches named with a underscore prefix are not ready to review, while other branches are ready to review.

When doing the git fetch --all, my git graph (by /libexec/git-core/git-gui) will see all branches no matter whether they have the underscore prefix or not. It complicates the graph.

I want git fetch to ignore those _XXXX branches from being downloaded to my local git. So when I view the git graph it's like:

• Shows branches: RemoteA/Branch1 , RemoteB/Branch1, RemoteB/Branch2
• Ignores branches: RemoteA/_Branch2, RemoteB/_Branch3

How can I do this?

Answer 1

Update for Git v2.29.0

With negative refspecs,¹ added in Git v2.29, you can achieve your original intent without any changes to your coworkers’ habits.

For each coworker’s remote, add a negative refspec (i.e. prefixed with ^) to exclude the _-prefixed branches. This is loosely adapted from the unit test for .git/config and the one for negative patterns. See the last line in the code block below for "Fred’s" remote.

[remote "fred"]
    url = something.git
    fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/fred/*
    fetch = ^refs/heads/_*

You have two options to set this for fred on the command line:

• git config --add remote.fred.fetch '^refs/heads/_*'
• git remote set-branches --add fred '^refs/heads/_*'

Original answer

Expanding on VonC's excellent answer with a special "review" folder,² you can modify your .git/config’s entries for your coworkers’ remotes. Here is the relevant documentation.

Where it was once

[remote "fred"]
    url = something.git
    fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/fred/*

You can change it to

[remote "fred"]
    url = something.git
    fetch = +refs/heads/review/*:refs/remotes/fred/review/*
    fetch = +refs/heads/other_pattern/*:refs/remotes/fred/other_pattern/*
    fetch = +refs/heads/specific_branch:refs/remotes/fred/specific_branch

After doing so, you may have to clean up the references to refs you have already fetched, but future git fetch --alls or git fetch freds will not update anything outside of the patterns you specified.

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_{¹ As of 2022-02-23, there is still no documentation on negative refspecs, so the best place to look is in Git's history or in VonC's answer to a different question, where he pulls the relevant parts together.
² Or as many special or interesting folders and branches as you need.}

Answer 2

Instead of using a '_' naming convention, you could use namespaces, pushing the branch in origin/review/Branch1 (git push Branch1:review/Branch1)
(named "group" in that answer, or "hierarchical branch name (branch names with slash) in that answer)

That way, you only have to fetch what is in the "review' namespace:

git fetch +refs/heads/review/*:refs/remotes/origin/review/*

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The only other option would be a script, which would:

• list the remote branches (without fetching anything): git ls-remote origin
• for each branch with the right name, fetch only that branch