Subject: Re: Triangular workflow

From: Jeff King <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2026 21:34:08 -0500

On Wed, Jan 14, 2026 at 12:01:07AM +0100, Harald Nordgren wrote:

> I'm wondering if since you are scripting this anyway, if you really need a
> push branch at all? Can't you just as easily switch to doing this in the
> script:
> 
>     git config push.default upstream
>     git push github jk/some-topic

I could (and in fact the script names the remote directly already,
because you can't pass refspecs without specifying the remote). But I do
occasionally push a single branch with a bare "git push". Usually this
is the integration branch, when I am trying to trigger CI manually
(e.g., when piling hacks on top in order to debug a CI failure ;) ).

So even if I only do it infrequently, it feels weird that a bare "git
push" would try to push to the upstream remote (which I don't even have
write access to!).

> As a note, before I started working on this feature, I don't realize
> that there was such a thing as a push branch (i.e. something different from
> the tracking branch). So I had the habit of checking out and pushing like
> this:
> 
>     git branch --set-upstream-to upstream/master
>     git push origin $(git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD)
> 
> I worked really well for me. The only issue was missing the status info
> from my own branch -- which is why I started writing this feature.

Yeah, though @{push} is usually not explicitly configured in the same
way @{upstream} is, but rather a consequence of how push.default and
remote.pushdefault interact. But it was added for exactly this kind of
triangular workflow. I sometimes will do stuff like:

  git range-diff origin @{push} HEAD

to compare two iterations of a branch if I know that I haven't pushed.
It is a bit of a cheat, because what I really mean is "do a range-diff
since the last thing I sent to the list". But if I have just been
working on a branch, and I haven't run an integration cycle since then,
then I know that the pushed version will match it.

There is also branch.*.pushRemote, but I have not found that useful (for
my triangular flow there is always a single repo to push to, not one per
branch).

-Peff