Subject: Re: [PATCH] push: change needlessly ambiguous example in error

From: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2018 22:55:32 +0100

On Tue, Nov 13 2018, Matthieu Moy wrote:

> Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason" <[email-masked]> wrote:
>
>> Let's use "git push <remote> HEAD" which always means push the current
>> branch name to that remote, instead of "git push <remote>
>> <current-branch-name>" which will do that under "simple", but is not
>> guaranteed to do under "upstream".
>
> Probably a good idea indeed.
>
> One potential objection though: I think many people know
>
>   git push origin master
>
> (not that they necessarily understand it, but I've seen many people talking
> or asking questions about what "origin master" is)
>
> This "git push origin HEAD" is IMHO less common. It may confuse users.
> Or users may learn it and be happy thanks to your message. I don't know.

I was hoping for the latter. I'm slightly embarrassed to say that for
the entire time I've been using git I've been doing:

    # on branch 'topic'
    git push origin topic:topic

Where 'topic' is a tracking branch of 'origin/master' (I use
push.default=upstream). I only recently discovered that I could push to
'HEAD" to do the same thing. So one ulterior motive is to make that more
prominent.

I was going to add a hint on such invocations saying "you can just use
HEAD", but have not found the relevant code yet after some brief
searching...