So you are using git you've done some work on your branch, everything is committed and you want to do a push to a remote repository. If you have used simple defaults to configure your repository then it is very possible that you will receive this message when you attempt to do a git push without any arguments:

The reason for this is because by default git tries to push all matching refspecs which is not usually what you want to do. There are a couple of places you can configure this if you do not want to receive this message. You can configure this at a repository level by running the following command from the shell (in the repository folder):

git config push.default [setting]

Where [setting] is one of the following values:

- nothing
- matching
- tracking
- current

Currently the setting that I find myself using the most is current. By setting this setting it allows me to do a push by simply running git push without any arguments.

Of course, if this is your default then you can create a fallback setting in your .gitconfig file that will be used in the event that a repository you are working in has not got a push.default configured. To do this just add the following entry into your .gitconfig file:

[push]
  default = current

This ensures that if you happen to be working in a repository that does not explicitly have push.default set, then when you do a push without any arguments it will not attempt to push all matching branches, only the current branch you are working on.

Develop With Passion!!