Git Push Questions - Pedantic

Question

I have a master branch and a searchfeature branch in my project. I have pushed the searchfeature branch to the remote repository, all okay so far

When I was working on that branch this morning, I did "git push" I got the following:

warning: You did not specify any refspecs to push, and the current remote
warning: has not configured any push refspecs. The default action in this
warning: case is to push all matching refspecs, that is, all branches
warning: that exist both locally and remotely will be updated.  This may
warning: not necessarily be what you want to happen.
warning: 
warning: You can specify what action you want to take in this case, and
warning: avoid seeing this message again, by configuring 'push.default' to:
warning:   'nothing'  : Do not push anything
warning:   'matching' : Push all matching branches (default)
warning:   'tracking' : Push the current branch to whatever it is tracking
warning:   'current'  : Push the current branch

So I went ahead a did a git config push.default tracking and voila, git push works this no problem, no warning.

What I dont understand is what the difference between "current" and "tracking" is, if you don't do "to whatever it is tracking" then what is the point of "current" - where would it go?, what scenarios would you use current rather than tracking?

Also, what scenarios would one ever use "nothing"?

score 6 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:19

Since Git1.6.3:

When the user does not tell "git push" what to push, it has always pushed matching refs.
For some people it is unexpected, and a new configuration variable push.default has been introduced to allow changing a different default behavior.
To advertise the new feature, a big warning is issued if this is not configured and a git push without arguments is attempted.

So the difference between current and tracking is that:

current will assume a matching ref (a remote branch with the same name, which may not exist)
tracking will based the remote ref to use on the tracking ref associated with that local branch. If it does not track anything, it won't push. But it can track a remote branch with a different name.a remo

Note: default nothing would be useful for read-only repository, made only for content consultation, where no work is supposed to be done and published anywhere.

See also the git push current branch SO question.

Update March 2012: Beware: that default "matching" policy might change soon:

See "Please discuss: what "git push" should do when you do not say what to push?"

In the current setting (i.e. push.default=matching), git push without argument will push all branches that exist locally and remotely with the same name.
This is usually appropriate when a developer pushes to his own public repository, but may be confusing if not dangerous when using a shared repository.

The proposal is to change the default to 'upstream', i.e. push only the current branch, and push it to the branch git pull would pull from.
Another candidate is 'current'; this pushes only the current branch to the remote branch of the same name.

What has been discussed so far can be seen in this thread:

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/192547/focus=192694

Previous relevant discussions include:

To join the discussion, send your messages to: git@vger.kernel.org

Git Push Questions - Pedantic

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