Hi Xavier, Thanks for the follow-up. >I found this message when trying to see if someone had already suggested > something along those lines. Did you find any other related threads that could add context? I did not find anything when I looked. > what I wanted to propose was to only automatically setup the merge on > implicit remote tracking branches While I understand this as a personal expectation/preference, that doesn't seem to align with the expectations of the "beginner users" that I interact with; generally, they expect a branch that is "the local version of a remote branch" to behave one way, and a branch that "was 'branched' from the then-HEAD of a remote branch" to behave another way - regardless of whether a given user knows the "pretend I already have the branch locally / create it on-the-fly" syntax, or is explicit about saying "I want to work on (for example) master which I know is origin/master on the remote". > As far as I'm concerned, `git switch` actually behaving as documented > would resolve the entire issue I'm not sure I understand this. I just tested and got exactly what I expected from the doc: $ git -c merge.autosetupmerge=false switch -t origin/mybranch Branch 'mybranch' set up to track remote branch 'mybranch' from 'origin'. Switched to a new branch 'mybranch' I agree being able to say "git switch mybranch", without the other side effects of merge.autosetupmerge=true, would be convenient... but then I'm arguing for a broader change and (in my opinion) better value of "merge.autosetupmerge" altogether :) Fwiw, I submitted a patch introducing this "merge.autosetupmerge=simple" option earlier today, but no reactions yet. I don't know whether that's because project members disagree that there is inherent unnecessary complexity facing "beginners" in the current behavior, or disagree that this is a reasonable direction to reduce that complexity, or are frustrated with my spotty participation record in this mailing list, or the terrible quality of my C- and project-novice code, or simply haven't looked at this topic yet! The patch series is titled "adding new branch.autosetupmerge option "simple"". Thanks again, Tao On Wed, Feb 9, 2022 at 2:46 PM Xavier Morel <xmo@xxxxxxxx> wrote: > > I found this message when trying to see if someone had already suggested > something along those lines. > > In fact I would be even more restrictive: what I wanted to propose was > to only automatically setup the merge on implicit remote tracking > branches, that is: > > git switch foo > > if there is no such branch locally will look for the corresponding > branch in the remotes, and will create a matching local one. In that > case it makes a lot of sense to create a remote-tracking branch: when > implicitly checking out a remote branch, it's likely the goal is to > track it. > > The issue is that > > git switch -c bar foo > > will do the same, despite explicitely creating a differently named > branch, which is probably some sort of feature which needs to be > remote-ed somewhere else. If this issue is not caught immediately it is > possible to push directly upstream by mistake. > > Upon reading the documentation of `git switch` I actually believed this > would behave correctly given `autoSetupMerge=false`: > > --guess, --no-guess > If <branch> is not found but there does exist a tracking branch > in exactly one remote (call it <remote>) with > a matching name, treat as equivalent to > > $ git switch -c <branch> --track <remote>/<branch> > > Because `--guess` is the default for the `git switch <name>` form, this > description made me believe the tracking would be forced. > > Sadly it is not so, setting `autoSetupMerge=false` will also disable > automatic remote-tracking on guessed branch. > > As far as I'm concerned, `git switch` actually behaving as documented > would resolve the entire issue (especially if it were possible to > disable `git checkout` somehow, such that I would have to force muscle > memory). > > This is made more annoying because > > git switch -t foo > > *does not work*, frustratingly (if as documented, this time) `-t` > implies `-c`. So it's not even possible to remember to type `git switch > -t remotebranch` and then live happily with `autoSetupMerge=false`. This > makes `autoSetupMerge=false` a lot more frustrating that necessary.
