Re: push.default: current vs upstream

From: Dmitry Potapov <dpotapov@gmail.com>
Date: Apr 6, 2012, 11:38 UTC
Message-ID: <CAHkcotjrVqvYnAV5U7gPngbW0saghAv8vZB3jh=dOKLPmYdJrQ@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <vpqwr5uceis.fsf@bauges.imag.fr>

On Thu, Apr 5, 2012 at 8:46 PM, Matthieu Moy <Matthieu.Moy@grenoble-inp.fr> wrote:

>
> I can hardly imagine someone knowing what "git pull" does, and
> _surprised_ to see that "git push" sends commits to the same place.

It seems you assume that people use in a _centralized_ workflow. In this case, 'upstream' does largely the right thing, so no one will be surprised.

However, many of those who got used to a distributed workflow will find that surprising, because when they created a new branch that meant it to push as a _new_ branch. So other people could take a look, or they may need the maintainer ACK to push anything to 'master'. Also they may have a policy nothing should be fast-forwarded to master, but only to be merged with a merge commit.

And then it is more natural for people to think in terms of names that are immediately obvious to anyone, while 'upstream' behavior depends on the state that is not immediately obvious. You may start a new topic branch based on 'master' or some the latest release to have a more stable base. And 'upstream' will work differently in this case. If you know about 'tracking' then it may be obvious to you, but it is not so obvious to those who only start to use git for short time...

>
> And I still have my concern with real beginners: what advice would you
> give to a user whose "git push" is denied because of non-fast forward. I
> raised this concern already:

Don't use a central workflow, because it sucks :)

Seriously, why do you care about beginners who use a centralized workflow and not beginners who have to use with existing projects that use more or less distributed workflow, where pushing to 'master' is more likely to be the wrong thing to do than otherwise... And when push is denied, they may ask someone whether they are doing something wrong. In case when master is fast-forwarded silently, they are not likely to notice that they did something wrong, and the fact that happens only sometimes (depending on some "tracking" feature which they have not heard) is not very helpful.

Dmitry