Why do I need to do `--set-upstream` all the time?

Question

I create a new branch in Git:

git branch my_branch

Push it:

git push origin my_branch

Now say someone mad

Answer 1

Because git has the cool ability to push/pull different branches to different "upstream" repositories. You could even use separate repositories for pushing and pulling - on the same branch. This can create a distributed, multi-level flow, I can see this being useful on project such as the Linux kernel. Git was originally built to be used on that project.

As a consequence, it does not make assumption about which repo your branch should be tracking.

On the other hand, most people do not use git in this way, so it might make a good case for a default option.

Git is generally pretty low-level and it can be frustrating. Yet there are GUIs and it should be easy to write helper scripts if you still want to use it from the shell.