Re: Separate default remotes for pulling and pushing

Hey Jeff,

Thanks for the super write-up.

That probably doesn't quite do what David wants. It's useful when the
URL for pushing and pulling a particular repository are different.

But if I understand it correctly, David has two _separate_ repositories.
And using remote.*.pushurl for that has some unwanted side effects,
because the tracking ref namespace (i.e., "remotes/origin/*") is shared
by both, even though their refs may not be at the same position.

For example, when pushing "refs/heads/master" to the remote, git will
update "refs/remotes/origin/master" to the pushed value. But that ref is
supposed to reflect the value of the last fetch from his "original"
repository, and now it doesn't. The ref value will flip back and forth
between what's in the two repositories as he pushes and fetches.

I was actually using Sverre's recommendation with virtually no problems except for what you mention: the ref value flips back and forth.

 4. Decentralized, you're a developer that publishes work via git. You
    call the upstream maintainer "origin", so fetches are convenient
    (and git does this for you at clone, after all). But pushing, even
    though you probably always push to the same central, does not have
    a convenient shorthand.

By "push to the same central", I assume you mean "push to the same mirror of origin".

    This is David's case (and mine, and I suspect some other git
    developers who do enough work that they want to make it publicly
    available via git, or even just have backups). It's also encouraged
    by sites like github, where you might clone the upstream's
    repository, but then pushes your changes up to a personal "fork"
    to let others see and merge them.

So I think part of the reason we don't have such an option is that cases
1-3 are so common. But it would be a nice convenience for people in case
4.

I think github is making option 4 the dominant use case. In fact, in our workplace we have a similar workflow set up, where we pull from a central origin, but push to individual mirrors from where commits are reviewed, tested, and merged unto origin.

--David