Re: git push origin error (1.6.3 new default functionality)

From: Michael J Gruber <git@drmicha.warpmail.net>
Date: May 12, 2009, 11:11 UTC
Message-ID: <4A09594F.4040603@drmicha.warpmail.net>
In-Reply-To: <81bfc67a0905111826y779555cer6679da11db787ab1@mail.gmail.com>

Caleb Cushing venit, vidit, dixit 12.05.2009 03:26:

Show 8 quoted lines

> in the past git push origin would just push all matching branches to
> the remote, and it worked. the new error says that's still the
> default. The new functionality is nice, but is it really the git way
> to yell at you if you haven't explicitly set the default? I think the
> default should remain the default, and it should continue to work
> without yelling at you for not explicitly setting it. if you want to
> change it that's fine.
>

\begin{rambling} It is a fall-out from the new user friendliness initiative. Watch out for parentheses: it's ( (new user) friendliness ), not ( new (user friendliness) ).

The principle is: if a user is about to do something which is documented but might not have been intended we throw a half-screen full of text at them. The idea is that it is virtually impossible to grasp at a glance from that much text what happened, so that the user is forced to read the whole text. edugit, so to say. \end{rambling}

Seriously, we had that discussion when the feature (change of default behaviour) and warning were introduced, so it's too late for a change. But it's never too late to do

git config --global push.default matching

and be done with it.

The weird thing is that the default is "matching" already. But it makes a difference whether you have set the variable to its default value explicitly or not. No man page says so (neither git-push nor git-config), and I can't think of other variables with such a behaviour.

Michael