Menu
I heard that in Git, you can let a local branch A track another local branch B.
Why would someone want to do that?
405
Tracking branches are local branches that have a direct relationship to a remote branch. If you're on a tracking branch and type git pull , Git automatically knows which server to fetch from and which branch to merge in. Now, your local branch sf will automatically pull from origin/serverfix .
Branches serve as an abstraction for the edit/stage/commit process. You can think of them as a way to request a brand new working directory, staging area, and project history. New commits are recorded in the history for the current branch, which results in a fork in the history of the project.
Git stores all references under the . git/refs folder and branches are stored in the directory . git/refs/heads . Since branch is a simple text file we can just create a file with the contents of a commit hash.
The main things that come to mind for having a local branch track another local branch are (1) more informed messages from Git regarding a branch being ahead/behind of the tracked branch and (2) trigger hooks.
One area Git displays more information is when creating a branch. Creating a basic branch looks like the following:
$ git co -b A master Switched to a new branch 'A' While creating a tracking branch looks like:
$ git co --track -b B master Branch B set up to track local branch master. Switched to a new branch 'B' This would add the following in .git/config:
[branch "B"] remote = . merge = refs/heads/master After committing some changes on branches A and B, executing git status -s -b on branch A displays ## A while on branch B it displays ## B...master [ahead 1, behind 1], providing some quick information regarding the relationship between branches B and master.
The other area where you might want a local branch track another local branch is to trigger hooks; in particular pre-receive, update, post-receive and post-update during a git push. You might have hooks to, for example, trigger a build on a continuous integration server, do some license header checks, check for white space format errors, etc.
109
If you love us? You can donate to us via Paypal or buy me a coffee so we can maintain and grow! Thank you!
Donate Us With
