How do you get git to always pull from a specific branch

Question

I m not a git master  but I have been working with it for some time now  with several different projects   In each project  I always git clone  repository  and from that point  can always git pull  so long as I don t have outstanding changes  of course   Recently  I had to revert to a previous branch  and did so with git checkout 4f82a29   When I was again ready to pull  I found that I had to set my branch back to master   Now  I can not pull using a straight git pull but instead  have to specify git pull origin master  which is annoying  and indicates to me that I don t fully understand what is going on   What has changed which does not allow me to do a straight git pull without specifying origin master  and how to I change it back   UPDATE   -bash-3 1  cat config  core      repositoryformatversion   0     filemode   true     bare   false     logallrefupdates   true  branch  master    remote  origin       url   git github com user project git     fetch   refs heads   refs remotes origin     UPDATE 2  To be clear  I understand that my original method may have been incorrect  but I need to fix this repo so that I can simply use git pull again   Currently  git pull results in   -bash-3 1  git pull You asked me to pull without telling me which branch you want to merge with  and  branch master merge  in your configuration file does not tell me either   Please name which branch you want to merge on the command line and try again  e g   git pull      See git-pull 1  for details on the refspec   If you often merge with the same branch  you may want to configure the following variables in your configuration file       branch master remote        branch master merge        remote  url        remote  fetch     See git-config 1  for details    I can tell git pull which branch to merge  and it works correctly  but git pull does not work as it did originally before my git checkout

User · Answer

Your immediate question of how to make it pull master  you need to do what it says  Specify the refspec to pull from in your branch config    branch  master       merge   refs heads master

User · Answer

git branch --set-upstream master origin master   This will add the following info to your config file    branch  master       remote   origin     merge   refs heads master   If you have branch autosetuprebase   always then it will also add       rebase   true

User · Answer

I find it hard to remember the exact git config or git branch arguments as in mipadi s and Casey s answers  so I use these 2 commands to add the upstream reference   git pull origin master git push -u origin master   This will add the same info to your  git config  but I find it easier to remember

User · Answer

Not wanting to edit my git config file I followed the info in  mipadi s post and used     git pull origin master

User · Answer

Just wanted to add some info that  we can check this info whether git pull automatically refers to any branch or not   If you run the command  git remote show origin   assuming origin as the short name for remote   git shows this info  whether any default reference exists for git pull or not   Below is a sample output  taken from git documentation      git remote show origin   remote origin   Fetch URL  https   github com schacon ticgit   Push  URL  https   github com schacon ticgit   HEAD branch  master   Remote branches      master                               tracked     dev-branch                           tracked   Local branch configured for  git pull       master merges with remote master   Local ref configured for  git push       master pushes to master  up to date    Please note the part where it shows  Local branch configured for git pull   In this case  git pull will refer to git pull origin master  Initially  if you have cloned the repository  using git clone  these things are automatically taken care of  But if you have added a remote manually using git remote add  these are missing from the git config  If that is the case  then the part where it shows  Local branch configured for  git pull     would be missing from the output of git remote show origin   The next steps to follow if no configuration exists for git pull  have already been explained by other answers

User · Answer

Under  branch  master    try adding the following to the repo s Git config file   git config     branch  master       remote   origin     merge   refs heads master   This tells Git 2 things    When you re on the master branch  the default remote is origin  When using git pull on the master branch  with no remote and branch specified  use the default remote  origin  and merge in the changes from the remote master branch    I m not sure why this setup would ve been removed from your configuration  though  You may have to follow the suggestions that other people have posted  too  but this may work  or help at least    If you don t want to edit the config file by hand  you can use the command-line tool instead     git config branch master remote origin   git config branch master merge refs heads master

User · Answer

There is also a way of configuring Git so  it always pulls and pushes the equivalent remote branch to the branch currently checked out to the working copy  It s called a tracking branch which git ready recommends setting by default   For the next repository above the present working directory   git config branch autosetupmerge true   For all Git repositories  that are not configured otherwise   git config --global branch autosetupmerge true   Kind of magic  IMHO but this might help in cases where the specific branch is always the current branch   When you have branch autosetupmerge set to true and checkout a branch for the first time  Git will tell you about tracking the corresponding remote branch    master   git checkout gh-pages Branch gh-pages set up to track remote branch gh-pages from origin  Switched to a new branch  gh-pages    Git will then push to that corresponding branch automatically    gh-pages   git push Counting objects  8  done  Delta compression using up to 2 threads  Compressing objects  100   6 6   done  Writing objects  100   6 6   1003 bytes  done  Total 6  delta 2   reused 0  delta 0  To git github com bigben87 webbit git    1bf578c  268fb60  gh-pages - gt  gh-pages

User · Answer

If you prefer  you can set these options via the commmand line  instead of editing the config file  like so       git config branch master remote origin     git config branch master merge refs heads master   Or  if you re like me  and want this to be the default across all of your projects  including those you might work on in the future  then add it as a global config setting       git config --global branch master remote origin     git config --global branch master merge refs heads master

User · Answer

Git pull combines two actions -- fetching new commits from the remote repository in the tracked branches and then merging them into your current branch    When you checked out a particular commit  you don t have a current branch  you only have HEAD pointing to the last commit you made  So git pull doesn t have all its parameters specified   That s why it didn t work   Based on your updated info  what you re trying to do is revert your remote repo  If you know the commit that introduced the bug  the easiest way to handle this is with git revert which records a new commit which undoes the specified buggy commit     git checkout master   git reflog             to find the SHA1 of buggy commit  say  b12345   git revert b12345   git pull   git push   Since it s your server that you are wanting to change  I will assume that you don t need to rewrite history to hide the buggy commit   If the bug was introduced in a merge commit  then this procedure will not work  See  How-to-revert-a-faulty-merge

[git] How do you get git to always pull from a specific branch?

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