Re: [PATCH] status: show default branch comparison when tracking non-default branch

From: Yee Cheng Chin <ychin.macvim@gmail.com>
Date: Dec 24, 2025, 00:49 UTC
Message-ID: <CAHTeOx8nrjJVD0U0=BDTUJZNZX0Xs_b4YGbj=WSavWEPEg-9Eg@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqy0msogso.fsf@gitster.g>

On Tue, Dec 23, 2025 at 4:38 PM Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:

Show 6 quoted lines

> Good point.  There is a mechanism to determine where a branch would
> be pushed to with "git push", and where the new material to update
> the branch would come from with "git pull", and these places need to
> be considered when doing comparisons.  This series seems to punt on
> determining both repository and branch and instead uses a hardcoded
> "upstream" (or "origin") and "HEAD", which is not satisfactory.

I may be speaking for the author here, but I think the reason why the upstream discovery (or alternatively an additional configuration in the repo) feature was suggested is that not everyone uses the mechanism you described (which I think is the "pushRemote" config). It's true that if you *do* indeed have separate push/pull remotes for a branch, then both should ideally be shown in `git status`. However, oftentimes when you set up a feature branch it may not be correct / desirable to set up separate push/pull remotes for those, especially if you need to collaborate with people on the feature and therefore do need to pull from the same feature's branch. In this case, I think the author still wants `git status` to be able to show the diversion from the original upstream master/main.

Personally I wonder if this feature gets added, people will start asking for a list of "upstream branches" to be able to be compared to, rather than just a fixed upstream/HEAD or origin/HEAD. But maybe I'm thinking too far ahead.

But for example, I maintain MacVim, which is a downstream fork of Vim. As such, "upstream" is a fluid concept for me depending on what I'm doing. It could mean deviation between ychin/macvim vs macvim-dev/macvim, or macvim-dev/macvim vs vim/vim. For complicated forks, it's feasible someone may ask for the ability to see the branch comparison against multiple branches concurrently.