message on no-args push to an empty repo

From: Sitaram Chamarty <sitaramc@gmail.com>
Date: Mar 13, 2010, 01:59 UTC
Message-ID: <2e24e5b91003121759k34ec294cl8a57ef22eda2bbf5@mail.gmail.com>

Hello,

When someone is doing the *first* push to an empty remote repo, and they try to use the no-args "git push", they get this:

> No refs in common and none specified; doing nothing.
> Perhaps you should specify a branch such as 'master'.
> fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly
> error: failed to push some refs to 'git@gitsrv:testsite.git'

This is a fairly clear message, except that by only mentioning the branch name, and not the remote name, it perhaps confuses people into doing this:

> $ git push master
>
> fatal: 'master' does not appear to be a git repository
> fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly

The correct answer of course is "git push origin master", and yes I realise they should read the git-push manpage...

Can we think of a possible wording change to that message to help this situation? For example, would it be safe to assume the remote would always (in such cases) be "origin" and say:

    Perhaps you should specify the remote and the branch explicitly,
like 'git push origin master'

Regards,

Sitaram