push.default Defines the action git push should take if no refspec is given on the command line, no refspec is configured in the remote, a

push.default Defines the action git push should take if no refspec is given on the command line, no refspec is configured in the remote, and no refspec is implied by any of the options given on the command line. Possible values are: · nothing - do not push anything. · matching - push all matching branches. All branches having the same name in both ends are considered to be matching. This is the default. · upstream - push the current branch to its upstream branch. · tracking - deprecated synonym for upstream. · current - push the current branch to a branch of the same name. (yes, my version of git on this machine is out of date) Emphasis on: "if no refspec is given on the command line, no refspec is configured in the remote, and no refspec is implied by any of the options given on the command line" These modes define what happens if you give no options to git-push. If these modes didn't exist, then you would instead be complaining that a plain old `git push` with no arguments didn't "do what you clearly meant" (where "clearly meant" changes from user to user... particularly since different users have different workflows, some centralized, some not.) If git-push worked as you suggest, then you would just be complaining that you had to escape your asterisks characters to prevent the shell from expanding them (remember that glob expansion is not something that ls provides...), instead of using a far simpler --all. You want a legitimate complaint about git-push? Try: "git-add allows either --all or -A, but git-push only allows --all."