Re: git: how to figure out with a script what the last commit on remote repo is without fetching it

[lee <lee@yun.yagibdah.de>]

Joel Rees <joel.rees@gmail.com> writes:

> 2014/09/08 2:08 "lee" <lee@yun.yagibdah.de>:
>>
>> Sven Joachim <svenjoac@gmx.de> writes:
>>
>> >> Does this mean that I cannot rely on any of the output of 'git status'
>> >> to decide whether there were commits or not?
>> >
>> > Commits where, on your local branch or on the remote one?
>>
>> On the remote branch --- when they are made to my local copy, I will
>> know about it anyway because I'm the one making them :)
>
> I'm no expert on this stuff, but from the way you talk about commits and
> branches and repositories, it sounds like you are expecting git to be
> pretty much the same as svn. It isn't.

I'm not aware of ever using svn.  I've used cvs and bzr to get sources
to compile, and for nothing more.  Git is the first of these things I
actually use myself for my own sources.

> How much of the documentation have you read, and how many of the
> examples have you worked through, and why aren't you using svn or cvs
> instead?

I have read so much documentation that I'm able to use git for what I'm
using it.  If you are aware of some documentation that would be helpful
for the problem at hand, please feel free to point it out.

I've watched a video in which Linus Torvalds explained some of the
advantages of git.  The video made me think that git seems to be a
pretty decent system.  A short while after watching the video I had to
learn about git because a repo I'm pulling from and which I have made a
fork of uses git.  So I started using git for my own sources as well,
and I'm finding it very useful.  Unlike other software for the same
purpose, I get more or less along with git.  Git also seems to have
become pretty widespread.

So why would I use something else, and how would that help me?

>> Then there is no reasonably way to find out whether new commits have
>> been made to a remote repo?
>
> Yes there is, it's just not done that way.

Then how is it done?

There seem to be tools available to send out notifications, and those
seem to have to be set up on the remote side.  I don't have any control
over the remote side, and it doesn't seem that they would have such
tools deployed.


-- 
Knowledge is volatile and fluid.  Software is power.