Yes, it looks like I had a local branch “origin” which was behind by 108 commits. Setting upstream to the local branch correctly states "track local branch origin”. It was my mistake, there is no bug. Thanks, $ git rev-parse --symbolic-full-name origin refs/heads/origin # origin is a local branch $ git show refs/heads/origin commit ad8c3ee6cb7740627e4ecddb418c826bc8597d3d # old commit, 108 commits behind master $ git branch ... * master ... origin ... $ git show origin commit ad8c3ee6cb7740627e4ecddb418c826bc8597d3d Merge: e16bda3 4b7564d $ git branch --set-upstream-to=origin/master Branch master set up to track remote branch master from origin $ git branch --set-upstream-to=origin #correctly says "track local branch origin" Branch master set up to track local branch origin. $ git status On branch master Your branch is ahead of 'origin' by 108 commits. (use "git push" to publish your local commits) Untracked files: (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed) ... nothing added to commit but untracked files present (use "git add" to track) $ git branch -d origin Deleted branch origin (was ad8c3ee). $ $ git status On branch master Your branch is based on 'origin', but the upstream is gone. (use "git branch --unset-upstream" to fixup) On 12/1/16, 2:23 PM, "Jeff King" <peff@xxxxxxxx> wrote: >On Thu, Dec 01, 2016 at 10:03:33PM +0000, Alfonsogonzalez, Ernesto (GE >Digital) wrote: > >> So I used branch ‹set-upstream and see the expected behavior. >> >> $ git branch --set-upstream-to=origin/master >> Branch master set up to track remote branch master from origin. > >Ah, that makes sense. > >> I¹m still not sure what it means for the branch upstream to be ³origin² >> only. > >The name "origin" generally resolves to refs/remotes/origin/HEAD, which >is a symbolic ref pointing to the "default branch" for that remote. >That's generally set at clone time from what the remote has in its HEAD, >but you can update it with "git remote set-head" if you want to. > >But that's just for resolving the name; I'm not sure that it would work >to set a branch's upstream to just "origin". Do you possibly have >another ref named origin? > >-Peff