Pushing to remote branch without specifying names
Pushing the current branch without specifying its name is easy:
# push current branch without specifying its name
git push origin HEAD
Git figures out the name of the current branch,
as its tip and HEAD
are pointing at the same thing.
For example if you're on a branch named somebranch
:
- If
somebranch
doesn't exist onorigin
, it will be created - If
somebranch
already exists onorigin
, it will be updated, if needed
What if you don't want to name the remote explicitly?
If the current branch is tracking a branch on a specific remote,
how to make Git push to that remote?
Unfortunately there's no easy trick like HEAD
for the branch name.
But it's possible to get the remote's name with git rev-parse
:
# get the current tracking remote/branch name
git rev-parse --abbrev-ref --symbolic-full-name @{u}
This will output in the format origin/somebranch
,
from which you can extract the remote's name with a little Bash:
refname=$(git rev-parse --abbrev-ref --symbolic-full-name @{u})
IFS=/ read -a arr <<< "$refname"
remote=${arr[0]}
branch=${arr[1]}
Now you can push to the right remote with:
git push $remote $branch
# or like this:
# git push $remote HEAD
<div class="text-muted">
Inspired by this question on #stackoverflow: <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/q/23573968/641955">How to push a branch of unknown name to it's remote every time?</a>
</div>