Minor annoyance with git push

["Martin Langhoff" <martin.langhoff@gmail.com>]

I have a minor UI issue with git pull. First, a bit of background: we
run a "central team repo" development model -- and we track on one
repo the "main" branches, and the client branches, where we do minor
customisations and sometimes client-funded feature work that is later
cherry-picked for the "main" branches. This is with a team of ~10
people, and lots of clients.

(To clarify: some clients are in specialised private repositories.
Most are happy and actually request that our work should be public.)

As we run a central repo, we all get *all* the branches when we do
fetch. A bit noisy, but no major issue. It is also a great thing as we
get asked to help in various branches, so I'll often hop on a client
branch that is mainly maintained by someone else, just to fix or
enhance something on the authentication (which I specialise in). After
that, I don't have much to do with that client branch.

This means that beyond the branches I actively work on, I also have
local tracking branches for remote heads that I am not updating. When
I say git push, these stale local tracking branches are making a lot
of noise in the output:

To git+ssh://git.catalyst.net.nz/var/git/moodle-r2.git
 ! [rejected]        mdl17-ceo -> mdl17-ceo (non-fast forward)
 ! [rejected]        mdl18-local -> mdl18-local (non-fast forward)
 ! [rejected]        mdl18-masseyedu-wimbatest ->
mdl18-masseyedu-wimbatest (non-fast forward)
 ! [rejected]        mdl18-nmit -> mdl18-nmit (non-fast forward)
 ! [rejected]        mdl18-proxy -> mdl18-proxy (non-fast forward)
 ! [rejected]        mdl18-shared -> mdl18-shared (non-fast forward)
 ! [rejected]        mdl18-sqm -> mdl18-sqm (non-fast forward)
 ! [rejected]        mdl18-stcuthberts -> mdl18-stcuthberts (non-fast forward)
 ! [rejected]        mdl18-topnz -> mdl18-topnz (non-fast forward)
 ! [rejected]        mdl19-dbperf -> mdl19-dbperf (non-fast forward)
 ! [rejected]        mdl19-ucol -> mdl19-ucol (non-fast forward)
 ! [rejected]        mdl19-uow -> mdl19-uow (non-fast forward)
error: failed to push to 'git+ssh://git.catalyst.net.nz/var/git/moodle-r2.git'

The error messages ("! rejected", "error: failed to push") appear even
if one or two branches did get pushed... I think they are a bit over
the top. None of these "rejected" branches have anything _new_, they
are just stale. Nothing new to say. Can we just ignore them, and only
say "ZOMG Failure! Rejected!!1!!" if we fail to push *new* local
commits that aren't in the repo (leading to an assumption that if the
user said "push" he'd expect those new local commits to be pushed to
the server)?

[ Personally, it doesn't bother me too much. But I can see some
newcomers to my team, and their eyes twitch when they see all the
exclamation marks. I've learned to look for the branch I care about
being pushed in the output, but it's particularly not user friendly as
it stands. ]

cheers,



m