Re: [RFC] New kind of upstream branch: base branch

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: May 19, 2013, 06:22 UTC
Message-ID: <7vbo871obk.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <51979065.4060609@bracey.fi>

Kevin Bracey <kevin@bracey.fi> writes:

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>>> I found myself thinking the same thing. It's really convenient being
>>> able to set your topic branch's upstream to another local branch, so
>
>> What is that "another local branch"? ...  And if that is your workflow, setting
>> push.default to "current" (and setting remote.pushdefault to your
>> publishing repository) should be a sufficient interim solution, and
>> you do not need to set branch.$name.push to each and every branch
>> you intend to push out, I think.
>
> I agree that using "push.default current" covers some cases - I hadn't
> really considered it - tended to just stick with "upstream". "current"
> nearly does the job, but I will sometimes be wanting different names.

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> What I'll often be doing is creating a topic branch based on master or
> origin/master. (I would hardly ever be updating master or pushing to
> origin/master myself, so I probably should be just doing
> origin/master, but I tend to create a local master just to save typing
> on all those "git rebase origin/master").

Do you mean, by "save typing", "instead of origin/master, I can type master"?

If you are using the "checkout -t -b topic origin/master", "git rebase" without any other argument should know that you meant to rebase against 'origin/master', so you do not even have to type 'master'.

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> During work, to give others visibility, and the possibility to tinker
> with the topic branch during development (as we don't have full
> inter-site sharing of work areas), I would push the topic branch up to
> the central "origin" server, often with a "kbracey/" prefix, partially
> for namespacing, and partially to indicate it's currently "private"
> work and subject to rebasing.  I guess I could create the topic branch
> as "kbracey/topic" locally, but I'd rather not have to.

Yup, that is sensible, and I think with Felipe's proposed change, you can spell it like this:

    [branch "topic"]
	remote = origin
	merge = refs/heads/master
        push = refs/heads/kbracey/topic

Note that the above assumes you did "checkout -t -b topic origin/master" as a typesaver for "git rebase".

> So I'd like "git rebase (-i)" to move my topic branch up
> (origin/)master. And I'd like "git push (-f)" to send it to
> "origin/kbracey/topic".

Understood. And I think the [branch "topic"] configuration above would cover that use case.

> And by extension, I suppose "git pull --rebase" to update origin/master
> and rebase. (Although I'm not much of a puller -  I tend to fetch
> then rebase manually).

"git pull --rebase" would be "git fetch" followed by "git rebase", and again the [branch "topic"] configuration above would cover that use case, I think.

> And it would be ideal if the initial base and push tracking
> information could be set up automatically on the first "git checkout
> -b"/"git branch" and "git push".

I think checkout and branch is already covered with -t. There may even be a configuration option to implicitly add -t to them (I didn't check).

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> (For one, I've always found it odd
> that there's an asymmetry - if you check out a topic branch from the
> server to work on or use it, you get a local copy with upstream set by
> default. But if you create a topic branch yourself then push it, the
> upstream isn't set by default - you need the -u flag. This seems odd
> to me, and I've seen others confused by this).

Yeah, I would imagine that it would be trivial to add an option to cause "git push" to do that, and it would be useful if you push to and pull from the same place (I haven't thought about ramifications such an option would have on the triangular workflows, though).

Thanks.