I’ll work on it tonight.

In the mean-time just understand that:

“git diff” compares your working directory and index/staging
“git diff –staged” compares your index/staging to your local repository (committed files)
“git diff HEAD” compares your local reponsitory (committed files) to your working directory

http://book.git-scm.com/3_comparing_commits_-_git_diff.html
http://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-diff.html

This is not to be read as a RTFM. I’ll write the post tonight.

Thanks
rp

I use the -t/–track command too. I, unfortunately, have local branches from my git beginnings that weren’t tracked and wanted to post this info in case anyone else comes across it.

I agree the refspec format seems arcane.

I didn’t know that checkout was wired to create a local tracking branch automatically now in 1.7. I’m going to play with that tonight.

Thanks for the additional information.

The refspec format frankly scares me. Even for Git it looks arcane.

I prefer the following, which sets up the local branch to track the remote branch:

$ git branch -t branchname remotename/branchname

Note: if “branchname” already exists locally, you may have to add an “-f” as another parameter, I believe before the branch name.

And very recently (1.7?) they added the a nifty feature to the checkout command:

$ git checkout branchname

If “branchname” is not already a local branch, it automatically creates a tracking branch with that name. Cool, eh?