Git fork

fetch: only respect followRemoteHEAD with configured refspecs

The new followRemoteHEAD feature is triggered for almost every fetch,
causing us to ask the server about the remote "HEAD" and to consider
updating our local tracking HEAD symref. This patch limits the feature
only to the case when we are fetching a remote using its configured
refspecs (typically into its refs/remotes/ hierarchy). There are two
reasons for this.

One is efficiency. E.g., the fixes in 6c915c3f85 (fetch: do not ask for
HEAD unnecessarily, 2024-12-06) and 20010b8c20 (fetch: avoid ls-refs
only to ask for HEAD symref update, 2025-03-08) were aimed at reducing
the work we do when we would not be able to update HEAD anyway. But they
do not quite cover all cases. The remaining one is:

git fetch origin refs/heads/foo:refs/remotes/origin/foo

which _sometimes_ can update HEAD, but usually not. And that leads us to
the second point, which is being simple and explainable.

The code for updating the tracking HEAD symref requires both that we
learned which ref the remote HEAD points at, and that the server
advertised that ref to us. But because the v2 protocol narrows the
server's advertisement, the command above would not typically update
HEAD at all, unless it happened to point to the "foo" branch. Or even
weirder, it probably _would_ update if the server is very old and
supports only the v0 protocol, which always gives a full advertisement.

This creates confusing behavior for the user: sometimes we may try to
update HEAD and sometimes not, depending on vague rules.

One option here would be to loosen the update code to accept the remote
HEAD even if the server did not advertise that ref. I think that could
work, but it may also lead to interesting corner cases (e.g., creating a
dangling symref locally, even though the branch is not unborn on the
server, if we happen not to have fetched it).

So let's instead simplify the rules: we'll only consider updating the
tracking HEAD symref when we're doing a full fetch of the remote's
configured refs. This is easy to implement; we can just set a flag at
the moment we realize we're using the configured refspecs. And we can
drop the special case code added by 6c915c3f85 and 20010b8c20, since
this covers those cases. The existing tests from those commits still
pass.

In t5505, an incidental call to "git fetch <remote> <refspec>" updated
HEAD, which caused us to adjust the test in 3f763ddf28 (fetch: set
remote/HEAD if it does not exist, 2024-11-22). We can now adjust that
back to how it was before the feature was added.

Even though t5505 is incidentally testing our new desired behavior,
we'll add an explicit test in t5510 to make sure it is covered.

Signed-off-by: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

authored by

Jeff King and committed by
Junio C Hamano
c834d1a7 1a0413a8

+23 -21
+2 -1
Documentation/config/remote.adoc
··· 108 108 `$HOME/.gitconfig`). 109 109 110 110 remote.<name>.followRemoteHEAD:: 111 - How linkgit:git-fetch[1] should handle updates to `remotes/<name>/HEAD`. 111 + How linkgit:git-fetch[1] should handle updates to `remotes/<name>/HEAD` 112 + when fetching using the configured refspecs of a remote. 112 113 The default value is "create", which will create `remotes/<name>/HEAD` 113 114 if it exists on the remote, but not locally; this will not touch an 114 115 already existing local reference. Setting it to "warn" will print
+6 -19
builtin/fetch.c
··· 1691 1691 return result; 1692 1692 } 1693 1693 1694 - static int uses_remote_tracking(struct transport *transport, struct refspec *rs) 1695 - { 1696 - if (!remote_is_configured(transport->remote, 0)) 1697 - return 0; 1698 - 1699 - if (!rs->nr) 1700 - rs = &transport->remote->fetch; 1701 - 1702 - for (int i = 0; i < rs->nr; i++) 1703 - if (rs->items[i].dst) 1704 - return 1; 1705 - 1706 - return 0; 1707 - } 1708 - 1709 1694 static int do_fetch(struct transport *transport, 1710 1695 struct refspec *rs, 1711 1696 const struct fetch_config *config) ··· 1720 1705 TRANSPORT_LS_REFS_OPTIONS_INIT; 1721 1706 struct fetch_head fetch_head = { 0 }; 1722 1707 struct strbuf err = STRBUF_INIT; 1708 + int do_set_head = 0; 1723 1709 1724 1710 if (tags == TAGS_DEFAULT) { 1725 1711 if (transport->remote->fetch_tags == 2) ··· 1740 1726 } else { 1741 1727 struct branch *branch = branch_get(NULL); 1742 1728 1743 - if (transport->remote->fetch.nr) 1729 + if (transport->remote->fetch.nr) { 1744 1730 refspec_ref_prefixes(&transport->remote->fetch, 1745 1731 &transport_ls_refs_options.ref_prefixes); 1732 + do_set_head = 1; 1733 + } 1746 1734 if (branch_has_merge_config(branch) && 1747 1735 !strcmp(branch->remote_name, transport->remote->name)) { 1748 1736 int i; ··· 1765 1753 strvec_push(&transport_ls_refs_options.ref_prefixes, 1766 1754 "refs/tags/"); 1767 1755 1768 - if (transport_ls_refs_options.ref_prefixes.nr && 1769 - uses_remote_tracking(transport, rs)) 1756 + if (do_set_head) 1770 1757 strvec_push(&transport_ls_refs_options.ref_prefixes, 1771 1758 "HEAD"); 1772 1759 ··· 1918 1905 "you need to specify exactly one branch with the --set-upstream option")); 1919 1906 } 1920 1907 } 1921 - if (set_head(remote_refs, transport->remote)) 1908 + if (do_set_head && set_head(remote_refs, transport->remote)) 1922 1909 ; 1923 1910 /* 1924 1911 * Way too many cases where this can go wrong
+1 -1
t/t5505-remote.sh
··· 499 499 cd test && 500 500 git fetch two "refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/two/*" && 501 501 git remote set-head --auto two >output 2>&1 && 502 - echo "${SQ}two/HEAD${SQ} is unchanged and points to ${SQ}main${SQ}" >expect && 502 + echo "${SQ}two/HEAD${SQ} is now created and points to ${SQ}main${SQ}" >expect && 503 503 test_cmp expect output 504 504 ) 505 505 '
+14
t/t5510-fetch.sh
··· 250 250 ) 251 251 ' 252 252 253 + test_expect_success 'followRemoteHEAD does not kick in with refspecs' ' 254 + test_when_finished "git config unset remote.origin.followRemoteHEAD" && 255 + ( 256 + cd "$D" && 257 + cd two && 258 + git remote set-head origin other && 259 + git config set remote.origin.followRemoteHEAD always && 260 + git fetch origin refs/heads/main:refs/remotes/origin/main && 261 + echo refs/remotes/origin/other >expect && 262 + git symbolic-ref refs/remotes/origin/HEAD >actual && 263 + test_cmp expect actual 264 + ) 265 + ' 266 + 253 267 test_expect_success 'fetch --prune on its own works as expected' ' 254 268 cd "$D" && 255 269 git clone . prune &&