Wrong tracking branch when re-cloning

Assume I have a repo foo that I want to clone into bar/copy. Let's say foo has two tagged commits v1 and v2.

When I first clone v1 using git subrepo clone --branch v1 copy and then later git subrepo clone --branch v2 --force copy and I check git subrepo status it tells me that Tracking Branch is v1. Is this intentional? I (maybe naively) assumed clone --force would have the same effect as me manually deleting copy and then doing a regular clone in which case Tracking Branch correctly says v2.

Side note:
When I use git subrepo pull --force --branch v2 copy everything seems to work. Can anyone fill me in what the differences between clone --force and pull --force are when used with branches?

[jrosdahl]

Related: #388

[admorgan]

Nope, that is not intentional. More specifically I do this all the time with the correct results so it is time to pull out the debugging hat.

Specifically git subrepo pull --force internally actually calls git subrepo clone see

git-subrepo/lib/git-subrepo

Line 531 in 2f68596

CALL subrepo:clone

Standard debug questions:
git subrepo version:
OS:
shell:
git version:

Do you have a public repo that demonstrates this?

It appears some problems get solved by doing nothing ... I setup a new dummy repo this morning so that I could share it here and all of a sudden everything works as expected (both in the new dummy repo and in the real repo). For reference

git subrepo version: 0.4.3
OS: macOS 11.2.3
shell: zsh
git version: 2.24.2

Maybe something in my shell I used yesterday got messed up and opening up a new shell this morning "fixed" the issue.

---

Specifically git subrepo pull --force internally actually calls git subrepo clone

So subrepo pull --force is basically a shortcut or is there any other difference? My usecase for git subrepo is managing generic dockerized applications i.e. there is foo which is the source code plus dockerfile and project might then clone foo (and possibly make some experimental local changes), add some deployment.yaml, build the thing and deploy it. Is using tags on foo and then using git subrepo pull --branch someTag --force the way to do this?

[admorgan]

It is a shortcut, but it is my favorite shortcut because it most accurately describes what your intent is. Yes git subrepo pull --branch someTag --force is the correct way to handle the situation you described.

If this happens again please reopen this issue.