git fetch vs. git fetch origin master have different effects on tracking branch

Question

This is mostly of the nature of a curiosity as I\'m trying to get familiar with Git. I have looked at the documentation for \'git fetch\' but I don\'t see an obvious explana

Answer 1

The answer lies in the messages you get back from git fetch. In the first case, when you fetch without providing a refspec, you'll see that the remote tracking branches are updated:

remote: Counting objects: 5, done.
remote: Total 3 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0)
Unpacking objects: 100% (3/3), done.
From /depot
   c67d1c8..1941673  master     -> origin/master

Note how the message says that origin/master is updated with the master from the origin.

Now in the second case, where you specify the refspec, you get something altogether different:

remote: Counting objects: 5, done.
remote: Total 3 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0)
Unpacking objects: 100% (3/3), done.
From /depot
 * branch            master     -> FETCH_HEAD

So when you specify the refspec, the remote tracking branch (origin/master) is NOT updated, only FETCH_HEAD.

The end result is that you'll appear to be ahead of origin/master when you're not really. I can't imagine why this behavior would be desirable, but it's definitely an interesting little quirk of the fetch command.