Git Push The Easy Way

Although I’m a big fan of Git Extensions on Windows, I still prefer the relative safety of the command line when doing things like pushing to the remote.

Now normally, using say PoshGit, I would type out something like

git push -u origin

then cut/paste the branch name from the command prompt. Yes, I know that tab completion can be sort of a friend here, but often it’s a little slow and the cut/paste can still be quicker. Either way, it’s not a bad workflow.

But then I discovered that HEAD, as an alias to the current branch, works just as well as the branch name!

So just typing

git push -u origin HEAD

works exactly as you’d expect - creating a remote branch with the current branch name!

Of course you can use it to do a normal push, fetch etc, wherever the current branch name is needed.

It doesn’t help if you have a sudden case of push-to-master-itis, but still … I think life changing isn’t too much of a stretch for this one :)