Re: [RFC PATCH] push: start warning upcoming default change for push.default

From: Matthieu Moy <Matthieu.Moy@grenoble-inp.fr>
To: Marc Branchaud <marcnarc@xiplink.com>
Cc: "Michael Haggerty" <mhagger@alum.mit.edu>,
	"Carlos Martín Nieto" <cmn@elego.de>,
	git@vger.kernel.org, gitster@pobox.com
Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH] push: start warning upcoming default change for push.default
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2012 17:37:32 +0100	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <vpqzkblixmb.fsf@bauges.imag.fr> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <4F5E12A5.6030701@xiplink.com> (Marc Branchaud's message of "Mon, 12 Mar 2012 11:13:41 -0400")

Marc Branchaud <marcnarc@xiplink.com> writes:

> On 12-03-10 01:16 AM, Michael Haggerty wrote:
>> 
>> I propose that the default should be even stricter: like "current", it
>> would push to an branch with the same name as the current local branch,
>> *but only if that branch already exists on the remote*.  It would only
>> be possible to create a new branch on the remote by calling "git push"
>> with an explicit branch argument.  I believe that such a policy would do
>> the right thing in the cases where the "right thing" is pretty
>> unambiguous, and would require a user decision in other cases.
>
> I haven't thought it through very deeply, but at first glance this seems like
> reasonable default behaviour to me.

I do find it reasonable, but I think 'upstream' has several advantages
over it.

* 'upstream' makes "git push" and "git pull" symmetrical. While there
  are workflows where it is usefull to have "push" and "pull" point to
  different branches, I think it is far more intuitive to have this
  symmetry by default.

* For newbies, the sequence "create an empty repository, clone it,
  commit and push" works like a charm with either 'upstream' or
  'current'. Today, the first push to an empty repository requires
  either saying "git push origin master" or "git push --all", both of
  which sound like black magic to the poor user who did not yet learn
  what 'origin' is and what a branch is.

* 'upstream' makes it easy to create a local topic branch, and let
  'push' send it to the master branch (i.e. have local 'topic-branch'
  pull and push to 'origin/master'). In general, 'upstream' allows
  workflows where you push to branches with either a different name or
  with the same name (by setting the upstream appropriately), but the
  opposite is not true.

That being said, I think the mode you Michael described at least
deserves to exist, even if I disagree that it would be the best default.

-- 
Matthieu Moy
http://www-verimag.imag.fr/~moy/