Make an existing Git branch track a remote branch?

Question

I know how to make a new branch that tracks remote branches, but how do I make an existing branch track a remote branch?

I know I can just edit the

Answer 1

This isn't a direct answer to this question, but I wanted to leave a note here for anyone who may be having the same issue as me when trying to configure an upstream branch.

Be wary of push.default.

With older git versions, the default was matching, which would cause very undesirable behaviour if you have, for example:

Local branch "master" tracking to origin/master

Remote branch "upstream" tracking to upstream/master

If you tried to "git push" when on the "upstream" branch, with push.default matching git would automatically try to merge the local branch "master" into "upstream/master", causing a whole lot of chaos.

This gives more sane behaviour:

git config --global push.default upstream