What does git push -u mean

Question

I have two different versions of git  In the 1 6 2 version  git push does not have the -u option  It only appears in the 1 7 x version   From the docs  the -u is related to the variable  branch  lt name gt  merge   in git config  This variable is described below   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    What is an upstream branch

User · Answer

This is no longer up-to-date    Push default is unset  its implicit value has changed in Git 2 0 from  matching  to  simple   To squelch this message and maintain the traditional behavior  use     git config --global push default matching  To squelch this message and adopt the new behavior now  use     git config --global push default simple  When push default is set to  matching   git will push local branches to the remote branches that already exist with the same name   Since Git 2 0  Git defaults to the more conservative  simple  behavior  which only pushes the current branch to the corresponding remote branch that  git pull  uses to update the current branch

User · Answer

When you push a new branch the first time use   gt git push -u origin  After that  you can just type a shorter command   gt git push The first-time -u option created a persistent upstream tracking branch with your local branch

User · Answer

Upstream  would refer to the main repo that other people will be pulling from  e g  your GitHub repo  The -u option automatically sets that upstream for you  linking your repo to a central one  That way  in the future  Git  knows  where you want to push to and where you want to pull from  so you can use git pull or git push without arguments  A little bit down  this article explains and demonstrates this concept

[git] What does git push -u mean?

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