What exactly does the u do git push -u origin master vs git push origin master

Question

I m apparently terrible at using git  despite my best attempts to understand it    From kernel org for git push      -u      --set-upstream      For every branch that is up to date or successfully pushed  add upstream  tracking  reference  used by argument-less git-pull 1  and other commands  For more information  see branch  lt name gt  merge in git-config 1     Here s branch  lt name gt  merge from git config      branch  lt name gt  merge      Defines  together with branch  lt name gt  remote  the upstream branch for the given branch  It tells git fetch git pull which branch to merge and can also affect git push  see push default   When in branch  lt name gt   it tells git fetch the default refspec to be marked for merging in FETCH HEAD  The value is handled like the remote part of a refspec  and must match a ref which is fetched from the remote given by  branch  lt name gt  remote   The merge information is used by git pull  which at first calls git fetch  to lookup the default branch for merging  Without this option  git pull defaults to merge the first refspec fetched  Specify multiple values to get an octopus merge  If you wish to setup git pull so that it merges into  lt name gt  from another branch in the local repository  you can point branch  lt name gt  merge to the desired branch  and use the special setting    a period  for branch  lt name gt  remote    I successfully set up a remote repository with github  and I successfully pushed my first commit to it with   git push -u origin master   Then  I unwittingly successfully pushed my second commit to my remote repository using   git commit -m           However  incorrectly thinking I would have to push again to origin from master  I ran     note  no -u git push origin master   What did that do  It didn t seem to have any effect at all  Did I  undo  git push -u origin master

User · Accepted Answer

The key is  argument-less git-pull   When you do a git pull from a branch  without specifying a source remote or branch  git looks at the branch  lt name gt  merge setting to know where to pull from  git push -u sets this information for the branch you re pushing   To see the difference  let s use a new empty branch     git checkout -b test   First  we push without -u     git push origin test   git pull You asked me to pull without telling me which branch you want to merge with  and  branch test merge  in your configuration file does not tell me  either  Please specify which branch you want to use on the command line and try again  e g   git pull  lt repository gt   lt refspec gt     See git-pull 1  for details   If you often merge with the same branch  you may want to use something like the following in your configuration file        branch  test       remote    lt nickname gt      merge    lt remote-ref gt        remote   lt nickname gt        url    lt url gt      fetch    lt refspec gt   See git-config 1  for details    Now if we add -u     git push -u origin test Branch test set up to track remote branch test from origin  Everything up-to-date   git pull Already up-to-date    Note that tracking information has been set up so that git pull works as expected without specifying the remote or branch   Update  Bonus tips    As Mark mentions in a comment  in addition to git pull this setting also affects default behavior of git push  If you get in the habit of using -u to capture the remote branch you intend to track  I recommend setting your push default config value to upstream  git push -u  lt remote gt  HEAD will push the current branch to a branch of the same name on  lt remote gt   and also set up tracking so you can do git push after that

User · Answer

git push -u origin master       is the same as   git push origin master   git branch --set-upstream master origin master   Do the last statement  if you forget the -u   Or you could force it   git config branch master remote origin git config branch master merge refs heads master   If you let the command do it for you  it will pick your mistakes like if you typed a non-existent branch or you didn t git remote add  though that might be what you want

User · Answer

All necessary git bash commands to push and pull into Github    git status  git pull git add filefullpath  git commit -m  comments for checkin file   git push origin branch master git remote -v  git log -2    If you want to edit a file then   edit filename      To see all branches and their commits   git show-branch

User · Answer

In more simple terms   Technically  the -u flag adds a tracking reference to the upstream server you are pushing to    What is important here is that this lets you do a git pull without supplying any more arguments  For example  once you do a git push -u origin master  you can later call git pull and git will know that you actually meant git pull origin master   Otherwise  you d have to type in the whole command

[git] What exactly does the "u" do? "git push -u origin master" vs "git push origin master"

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