fetch: add --prefetch option

The --prefetch option will be used by the 'prefetch' maintenance task
instead of sending refspecs explicitly across the command-line. The
intention is to modify the refspec to place all results in
refs/prefetch/ instead of anywhere else.

Create helper method filter_prefetch_refspec() to modify a given refspec
to fit the rules expected of the prefetch task:

 * Negative refspecs are preserved.
 * Refspecs without a destination are removed.
 * Refspecs whose source starts with "refs/tags/" are removed.
 * Other refspecs are placed within "refs/prefetch/".

Finally, we add the 'force' option to ensure that prefetch refs are
replaced as necessary.

There are some interesting cases that are worth testing.

An earlier version of this change dropped the "i--" from the loop that
deletes a refspec item and shifts the remaining entries down. This
allowed some refspecs to not be modified. The subtle part about the
first --prefetch test is that the "refs/tags/*" refspec appears directly
before the "refs/heads/bogus/*" refspec. Without that "i--", this
ordering would remove the "refs/tags/*" refspec and leave the last one
unmodified, placing the result in "refs/heads/*".

It is possible to have an empty refspec. This is typically the case for
remotes other than the origin, where users want to fetch a specific tag
or branch. To correctly test this case, we need to further remove the
upstream remote for the local branch. Thus, we are testing a refspec
that will be deleted, leaving nothing to fetch.

Helped-by: Tom Saeger <tom.saeger@oracle.com>
Helped-by: Ramsay Jones <ramsay@ramsayjones.plus.com>
Signed-off-by: Derrick Stolee <dstolee@microsoft.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

1 files changed, 5 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/fetch-options.txt b/Documentation/fetch-options.txt
index 07783deee3..9e7b4e189c 100644
--- a/Documentation/fetch-options.txt
+++ b/Documentation/fetch-options.txt
@@ -110,6 +110,11 @@ ifndef::git-pull[]
 	setting `fetch.writeCommitGraph`.
 endif::git-pull[]
 
+--prefetch::
+	Modify the configured refspec to place all refs into the
+	`refs/prefetch/` namespace. See the `prefetch` task in
+	linkgit:git-maintenance[1].
+
 -p::
 --prune::
 	Before fetching, remove any remote-tracking references that no