After doing a checkout of the remote branch releases/rel_5.4.1 using the Git GUI, I'm seeing this unexpected error message when I try to push:
fatal: The upstream branch of your current branch does not match
the name of your current branch. To push to the upstream branch
on the remote, use
git push origin HEAD:releases/rel_5.4.1
To push to the branch of the same name on the remote, use
git push origin rel_5.4.1
I don't know what Git is talking about. I probably want to push to origin releases/rel_5.4.1 since that's the branch which I checked out. So neither option seems correct to me.
git status says I'm on branch rel_5.4.1.
Here is the branch as it appears in my .git/config:
[branch "rel_5.4.1"]
remote = origin
merge = refs/heads/releases/rel_5.4.1
What is going on?
Your local branch is called rel_5.4.1 but the remote branch is releases/rel_5.4.1 (as far as Git is concerned, the / has no special meaning in branch names except to make them easier to read for the human eye).
When you push, Git is wary whether you want to push your branch to releases/rel_5.4.1 (the name of the remote branch) or whether you want to create a new remote branch. It does notice the similarity of names, though.
Unless you want to create a new branch, the correct command is
git push origin HEAD:releases/rel_5.4.1
You could also use
git push origin rel_5.4.1:releases/rel_5.4.1
To fix the warning once and for all, rename your local branch to match the remote name:
git branch -m releases/rel_5.4.1