show_branch_conditionally "$this_branch"
# this code is now doing what i have to do when i repair the repo. and it seems to be good so far.
+ # note that we allow the local branch to be merged with its remote counterpart; otherwise we would
+ # miss changes that happened elsewhere which should be seen in our local copy.
local branch_list=$(all_branch_names)
local bran
for bran in $branch_list; do