Re: [PATCH 1/1] config: support a default remote tracking setup upon branch creation

On Mon, Aug 02 2021, Ben Boeckel wrote:

On Mon, Aug 02, 2021 at 15:02:41 +0200, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote:

quoted

On Wed, Jul 28 2021, Ben Boeckel wrote:

quoted

The `branch.autoSetupMerge` works well today for setting up tracking a
local branch, but there is no easy mechanism to automatically set up a
remote tracking situation for workflows which use a single set of
branches for integration without specifying `--track` to every branch
creation command or branching directly from the remote ref. This patch
adds the following configuration values:

  - `branch.defaultRemote`: initializes `branch.<name>.remote` if not
    otherwise given;
  - `branch.defaultMerge`: initializes `branch.<name>.merge` if not
    otherwise given.

Not a new issue per-se, but what if you've got a branch called
defaultRemote? It seems to me that any new branch.<name>.* config closes
the door for a <name> we squat on.

It doesn't seem that shadowing is actually a thing:

    % git init
    Initialized empty Git repository in …/git-shadow/.git/
    % git config foo.bar true
    % git config foo.bar.baz true
    % git config --get foo.bar
    true
    % git config --get foo.bar.baz
    true

You're right, I was misrecalling (or mis-imagining) some edge case there
that doesn't exist. I also tested setting branch.defaultRemote=true and
moving a branch.defaultRemote.* branch with "git branch -m", but it also
does the right thing. Nevermind.

quoted

Given that we have checkout.defaultRemote and this also affects
switch/checkout it seems better to continue in the checkout.* namespace
even if it wasn't for that, but given the config squatting issue
especially so....

For what it's worth I usually use the checkout.defaultRemote option
(which I added) and:

    git checkout master &&
    git branch -m master <topic-name>

See 8d7b558baeb (checkout & worktree: introduce checkout.defaultRemote,
2018-06-05). It seems to me from that patch diff that you could modify
some docs / tests for this, no? E.g. how it interacts with git-worktree.

I think it would be weird for `checkout.*` to affect `git branch` which
does no checkout at all. I want it to set up for simple branch creation
as well, so this would be a hole in my use case.

*nod*, although your approach has the opposite problem of making branch
creation with "checkout" and "switch" (and presumably "worktree")
impacted by "branch.*' config.

In a way that's more sensible, in that we can imagine those commands
calling "git branch" under the hood (which msotly doesn't actually
happen, except I think in the worktree case, but it's the same
underlying APIs).

..

quoted

I like this direction, but just have a concern that this is a place
where we need to consider all the UX in the area overall, and that any
options/config don't overtly interact in a bad way.

I'll have to look at adding test cases as to how it interacts with
`checkout.defaultRemote`.

Thanks,

....right, none of that mess is a showstopper, I'm just prodding you to
look at if any of those edge cases are made better/worse by these
additions. Thanks!