Hi folks, In trying to recommend sane simple understandable git flows for large numbers of (often not git-proficient) users, I've found upstream tracking branches to be a sticky area. The main problem is that when users intentionally create a new branch "test1" from origin/master, for example, they automatically get upstream tracking... but after they've pushed their new branch to the remote, they (unless they do something "wrong") typically have tracking switched to "origin/test1" (after a weird error about not pushing to a differently-named upstream - because they have push.default set to "simple", the safe default - unless they're using a GUI that sweeps this under the rug). So the behavior of "pull" changes dramatically, from the user's perspective, after the first time they push. Until that point, the system is behaving "weird". On the other hand, when another user wants to work on "test1" directly, they branch from "origin/test1", they get upstream tracking, and everything is normal/predictable. I *think* the simplest / most understandable behavior for most users would be a variation on the current branch.autoSetupMerge=true behavior, except *only set up tracking if the local branch name matches*. This new branch.autoSetupMerge behavior (dare we call it "simple", to match push.default?) would mean that when branching from origin/master to test1, you would not get an upstream. Pull would say something like "hey, you haven't pushed yet", and everything would be understandable. Is this a scheme that makes sense to people here? Alternatively, another workable option for my not-so-sophisticated users would be something like branch.autoSetupMerge=current, which would simply always assume the same-name branch on the same remote. If this were a new branch, initial pulls would say "but there's no such branch on the remote!", and the first push would be even simpler, succeeding without the current surprising "The current branch has no upstream branch -0 run this slightly-more-complex command" message. Are my users the only ones who get caught out by the default tracking behavior when branching from a different upstream branch (but *expect* tracking when creating a local instance of a remote branch)? Thanks, Tao
