Gitology Recipe: Avoid Having to Specify Which Branch to Pull (Set Master as Default Remote Branch)

When Git doesn't know which remote branch you're trying to pull, you'll see a message that begins: "You asked me to pull without telling me which branch you want to merge with..." Most commonly, you're pulling from master, and you can specify it explicitly like so:

git pull origin master

But what if you're always (or almost always) pulling master? Wouldn't it be great to be able to set master as the default and simply type:

git pull

You just saved 14 characters of typing! Who wouldn't want that? If you want master to be default on a remote pull, simply add the following lines to your .git/config:

[branch "master"]
        remote = origin
        merge = /refs/heads/master

You can add the lines shown above by editing .git/config or via the following commands:

$ git config branch.master.remote 'origin'
$ git config branch.master.merge '/refs/heads/master'

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