Default behavior of “git push” without a branch specified

Question

I use the following command to push to my remote branch:

git push origin sandbox

If I say

git push origin

Answer 1

Rather than using aliases, I prefer creating git-XXX scripts so I can source control them more easily (our devs all have a certain source controlled dir on their path for this type of thing).

This script (called git-setpush) will set the config value for remote.origin.push value to something that will only push the current branch:

#!/bin/bash -eu

CURRENT_BRANCH=$(git branch | grep '^\*' | cut -d" " -f2)
NEW_PUSH_REF=HEAD:refs/for/$CURRENT_BRANCH

echo "setting remote.origin.push to $NEW_PUSH_REF"
git config remote.origin.push $NEW_PUSH_REF

note, as we're using Gerrit, it sets the target to refs/for/XXX to push into a review branch. It also assumes origin is your remote name.

Invoke it after checking out a branch with

git checkout your-branch
git setpush

It could obviously be adapted to also do the checkout, but I like scripts to do one thing and do it well