Re: [RFC/PATCH] Introduce remote.pushdefault

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Mar 17, 2013, 05:48 UTC
Message-ID: <20130317054803.GB16070@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <CALkWK0m2N=D47WJLk1F4j1GsGGWHyfxVF_WGXBbG3vyrfQ-oLA@mail.gmail.com>

On Sun, Mar 17, 2013 at 06:00:08AM +0530, Ramkumar Ramachandra wrote:

Show 25 quoted lines

> >> +remote.pushdefault::
> >> +     The remote to push to by default.  Overrides the
> >> +     branch-specific configuration `branch.<name>.remote`.
> >
> > It feels unexpected to see "I may have said while on this branch I
> > push there and on that branch I push somewhere else, but no, with
> > this single configuration I'm invalidating all these previous
> > statements, and all pushes go to this new place".
> >
> > Shouldn't the default be the default that is to be overridden by
> > other configuration that is more specific?  That is, "I would
> > normally push to this remote and unless I say otherwise that is all
> > I have to say, but for this particular branch, I push to somehwere
> > else".
> 
> I'm a little confused as to where this configuration variable will be
> useful.  On a fresh clone from Github, I get branch.master.remote
> configured to "origin".  How will adding remote.pushdefault have any
> impact, unless I explicitly remove this branch-specific remote
> configuration?  Besides, without branch.<name>.remote configured, I
> can't even pull and expect changes to be merged.  So, really: what is
> the use of remote.pushdefault?
> 
> I'm dropping this patch, and just going with branch.<name>.pushremote,
> unless you convince me otherwise.

That is why I described the scheme I did in [1]. It uses the following two general rules:

  1. Per-branch config trumps repo-wide config.

  2. Push-specific config (e.g., "remote.pushdefault") trumps
     non-specific config (e.g., "remote.default") for pushing.

So the push lookup list is (in order of precedence):

  1. branch.*.pushremote
  2. remote.pushdefault
  3. branch.*.remote
  4. remote.default
  5. origin

and it solves Junio's issue because the way to say "override my remote.pushdefault for this branch" is not to set "branch.*.remote", but to set "branch.*.pushremote".

-Peff

[1] http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/215751