Stop retyping your branch name when you push to origin

1. The problem and the solution

So after a few years of creating new branches and pushing them to the origin, I realized that I am doing a strange thing each time. Let's begin the simulation.

1. Create the branch locally.
2. Do some changes, commit them.

3. Time to push the changes:

   $ git push
   fatal: The current branch feature/a_branch has no upstream branch.
   To push the current branch and set the remote as upstream, use
   
   git push --set-upstream origin feature/a_branch

4. Copy the output command, paste it, execute again or retype with a shortcut: git push -u origin feature/a_branch
5. Done

Point 4 is just stupid, isn't it? Luckily according to git docs [1] we have a nice setting named push.default which we can set to current:

Push the current branch to update a branch with the same name on the receiving end. Works in both central and non-central workflows.

It is enough to run this command:

git config --global push.default current

To set automatic tracking (so You can pull changes from the origin) run this:

git config --global push.autoSetupRemote true

Done. Years of copy & pasting the output command are gone. You might want to see if the configuration is correct using

git config --global --list

Last thing to remember: If You want to pull from the remote later on, you still have to push the branch and set the tracking. But -u is everything you need here. So when you push for the first time use;

git push -u

You can of course apply this setting only to the selected repository. In this case, your working directory should be your repository and you should omit the --global argument. Cheers!

2. Conclusions

It is always worth to challenge your routine habits. The second conclusion is that it is worth to get know the tools you use 😅.

References:
Websites:

[1] Git configuration documentation

Tags

• git