Re: [PATCH 2/2] format-patch: introduce format.defaultTo

Ramkumar Ramachandra [off-list ref] writes:

A very common workflow for preparing patches involves working off a
topic branch and generating patches against 'master' to send off to the
maintainer. However, a plain

  $ git format-patch -o outgoing

is a no-op on a topic branch,...

Two points.

 - why is a single branch name sufficient?

 - is it a better option to simply default to @{u}, if one exists,
   instead of failing?

Junio C Hamano wrote:

 - why is a single branch name sufficient?

It does accept a <revision>, so any form is allowed; but why would
anyone want that in a format.defaultTo? I'm not sure we want to impose
an artificial restriction on the configuration variable though.

 - is it a better option to simply default to @{u}, if one exists,
   instead of failing?

I'm not sure @{u} is a good default. Personally, my workflow involves
publishing my fork before sending out patches; mainly so that I can
compare with @{u} when I do re-spins. People can put @{u} in
format.defaultTo if it suits their workflow though.