Re: remote.<name>.merge missing from the git-config man page?

Junio C Hamano wrote:

From: Taylor Blau <redacted>
Date: Mon, 8 Mar 2021 13:43:47 -0500
Subject: [PATCH] Documentation/git-push.txt: correct configuration typo

In the EXAMPLES section, git-push(1) says that 'git push origin' pushes
the current branch to the value of the 'remote.origin.merge'
configuration.

This wording (which dates back to b2ed944af7 (push: switch default from
"matching" to "simple", 2013-01-04)) is incorrect. There is no such
configuration as 'remote.<name>.merge'. This likely was originally
intended to read "branch.<name>.merge" instead.

Indeed, when 'push.default' is 'simple' (which is the default value, and
is applicable in this scenario per "without additional configuration"),
setup_push_upstream() dies if the branch's local name does not match
'branch.<name>.merge'.

Correct this long-standing typo to resolve some recent confusion on the
intended behavior of this example.

Reported-by: Adam Sharafeddine <redacted>
Reported-by: Fabien Terrani <redacted>
Signed-off-by: Taylor Blau <redacted>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <redacted>
---
 Documentation/git-push.txt | 2 +-
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)

Looks good.
Reviewed-by: Jonathan Nieder <redacted>

From the discussion it seems this sentence has further room for
improvement, but that shouldn't block this straightforward typofix
patch.

A few ideas for further improvement:

- I think "the configured upstream" would read more clearly as "its
  configured upstream"

- the parenthesis could be a little clearer by adding a verb --- e.g.
  "as determined by the `branch.<name>.merge` configuration variable".
  Alternatively, is that implementation detail the right thing to
  mention?  Perhaps we could instead say something like "as configured
  using git branch --set-upstream-to" as a way to introduce the
  concept of a branch's upstream.

- the "it" in "it has the same name" is vague.  Does a branch's
  upstream represent the remote-tracking branch (e.g.,
  refs/remotes/origin/main) it merges or rebases against, or does it
  represent the remote branch (e.g., refs/heads/main in the remote
  repository pointed to by origin) it pulls from?

Putting those together, I could imagine something along the lines of

	Without additional configuration, this first checks that the
	current branch's configured upstream (see git-branch(1)
	--set-upstream-to) is a remote branch with the same name and
	then pushes there.  If there is no configured upstream or
	the configured upstream has a different name, it errors out
	without pushing.

Thanks,
Jonathan