On my work computer, I can make a new git branch and push it up to GitHub with a simple git push. I don’t need to manually set or create the upstream branch. Not so on my home computer. At least not when working on my dotfiles repo. When I try to push up a new branch, I get this error:
fatal: The current branch new-branch has no upstream branch.
To push the current branch and set the remote as upstream, use
git push --set-upstream origin new-branch
It didn’t take too long to figure out the problem. Somewhere along the line I’d renamed the default remote from origin to github. I saw this by looking at the repo’s .git/.gitconfig file, which had the following lines:
[remote "github"]
url = git@github.com:erikphansen/bin.git
fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/github/*
[branch "master"]
remote = github
merge = refs/heads/master
I changed github to origin on the first and fifth lines, so it read:
[remote "origin"]
url = git@github.com:erikphansen/bin.git
fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/github/*
[branch "master"]
remote = origin
merge = refs/heads/master
After that, no more complaints when trying to push up a branch that didn’t yet exist on GitHub.
I’m pretty sure that tomorrow’s post will be a follow up explaining how I could keep my remote branch named github and still allow for auto-creation of remote branches. Stay tuned for that excitement.
P.S. You might also need to check the value of git’s push.default setting with $ git config --global push.default. It it’s not current, then run git config --global push.default current. In my case, this was already set, but I don’t believe it’s like this out of the box.