When i push a local branch up to the server it doesn't show as tracking

Question

I have a git repo. If I create a local branch, do stuff and then push the branch up to the server, doing a git branch -vv doesn't show it as tracking.

If however I pull the repo down fresh, it does show up with git branch -vv

I've also tried the following without success.

git config --get branch.foobranch.remote

git config --get branch.foobranch.merge

If I continue to use that branch, doing multiple push and pulls from the server, everything works so I can only assume that git knows that the branch is tracking the remote somehow. I'd like to know how I can access this information.

Answer 1

But isn't that tracking information there to begin with?

No: when you create a new branch locally, Git won't assume where (to which remote repo) you want to push it.

More specifically, a simple git push (without the -u) won't set the local config branch.<name>.remote and branch.<name>.merge, which are set when a local branch has one upstream branch associated to it.

You have to specify the upstream repo the first time you will push that branch.

That differs from a git clone (man page):

Clones a repository into a newly created directory, creates remote-tracking branches for each branch in the cloned repository (visible using git branch -r), and creates and checks out an initial branch that is forked from the cloned repository’s currently active branch.

Since a remote tracking branch exist for (for instance) origin/master, when git clone does checkout master, said master will automatically be associated with its upstream branch origin/master.
See git checkout

If <branch> is not found but there does exist a tracking branch in exactly one remote (call it <remote>) with a matching name, treat as equivalent to

$ git checkout -b <branch> --track <remote>/<branch>

That is why you can directly push from master after a clone, but you cannot push directly after creating a new branch (for which there is no origin/newBranch remote tracking branch already present in your local repo)

That checkout (tracking automatically the existing remote tracking branch origin/<branch>) will set the local config branch.<name>.remote and branch.<name>.merge.