Re: Using the --track option when creating a branch

On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 4:23 PM, Bill Lear [off-list ref] wrote:

We have had a few "crossed stream" problems when developers are
working on a local branch and they do an unguarded git push/pull,
when they really intended to do git push/pull origin branchname.

We use git in a way that makes it desirable for us to only push/pull
to the same remote branch.  So, if I'm in branch X, I want 'git push'
to push to origin/X, and 'git pull' to fetch into origin/X and then
merge into X from origin/X.

In other words, we want git push/pull to behave in branches other than
master the same way it does when in master.

I have discovered the '--track' option when creating a local branch,
and this appears to me to be the thing that gives us the desired
behavior.

branch.autosetupmerge controls if --track is used by default (it is
true by default since a long time)
(See "git help config" for details)

Before I tell the rest of the team that this is the correct way
to do things, I need to be sure I am correct, so if anyone here
can confirm or deny this, I'd appreciate it.

It should just work (at least in the lastest releases) when creating a
branch from a remote branch.

$ git checkout -b X origin/X
or
$ git branch X origin/X
Branch X set up to track remote branch refs/remotes/origin/X

Also, once a branch has been created, how can we add a '--track' option
after the fact?

It it just two configs (apart from the remote repository). A help
message should appear when using "git pull" without arguments and it
cannot figure out the branch to merge:

$ # currently in branch next
$ git pull
You asked me to pull without telling me which branch you
want to merge with, and 'branch.next.merge' in
your configuration file does not tell me either.  Please
name which branch you want to merge on the command line and
try again (e.g. 'git pull <repository> <refspec>').
See git-pull(1) for details on the refspec.

If you often merge with the same branch, you may want to
configure the following variables in your configuration
file:

    branch.next.remote = <nickname>
    branch.next.merge = <remote-ref>
    remote.<nickname>.url = <url>
    remote.<nickname>.fetch = <refspec>

See git-config(1) for details.

[end]

so to add it after the fact you should execute:

$ git config branch.next.remote origin
$ git config branch.next.merge refs/heads/next

Finally, is there a 'global' config setting that would set this behavior
for all repos (new or existing)?

See above.

We are using git 1.6.* versions here, mostly.

Santi