[Users] Git problem: "git pull" vs. "git pull -a"?

[Erik Schnetter]

I notice that GetComponents uses the command "git pull -a" instead of
"git pull" to update existing repositories. I also notice that many of
my git repositories which I updated via GetComponents have spurious
merge patches in there, apparently automatically committed by myself,
merging many versions of "master":

commit 2db16f219702be9b9bbdbe3290cd4ec67f514dbd
Author: Erik Schnetter <schnetter at cct.lsu.edu>
Date:   Tue Sep 14 21:54:25 2010 -0500

    Merge branches 'master', 'master', 'master', 'master', 'master' and 'master'

Another problem is that the checked out version of my source tree does
not change. In addition, the additional patches that have been pulled
in are marked as "undone" in the staging area, so that my next "git
commit" would create a patch that undoes them.

What does "git pull -a" do? Is that a bad option? I don't understand
the description of the git-pull man page; it says:

       -a, --append
           Append ref names and object names of fetched refs to the existing
           contents of .git/FETCH_HEAD. Without this option old data in
           .git/FETCH_HEAD will be overwritten.

Do we need to leave out the "-a" option? Or are my spurious merge
commits caused by something else? I didn't have any local changes to
start with.

-erik

-- 
Erik Schnetter <schnetter at cct.lsu.edu>   http://www.cct.lsu.edu/~eschnett/