Showing Your Remotes

To see which remote servers you have configured, you can run the git remote command. It lists the shortnames of each remote handle you’ve specified. If you’ve cloned your repository, you should at least see origin—?that is the default name Git gives to the server you cloned from:

$ git remote
Origin

You can also specify -v, which shows you the URLs that Git has stored for the shortname to be used when reading and writing to that remote:

$ git remote -v
origin https://github.com/schacon/ticgit (fetch)
origin https://github.com/schacon/ticgit (push)

If you have more than one remote, the command lists them all.

$ cd grit
$ git remote -v
bakkdoor https://github.com/bakkdoor/grit (fetch)
bakkdoor https://github.com/bakkdoor/grit (push)
koke git://github.com/koke/grit.git (fetch)
koke git://github.com/koke/grit.git (push)
origin [email protected]:mojombo/grit.git (fetch)
origin [email protected]:mojombo/grit.git (push)

Adding Remote Repositories

To add a new remote Git repository as a shortname you can reference easily, run git remote add <shortname> <url>:

$ git remote add pb https://github.com/paulboone/ticgit

Now you can use the string pb on the command line in lieu of the whole URL. For example, if you want to fetch all the information that Paul has but that you don’t yet have in your repository, you can run git fetch pb:

$ git fetch pb
remote: Counting objects: 43, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (36/36), done.
remote: Total 43 (delta 10), reused 31 (delta 5)
Unpacking objects: 100% (43/43), done.
From https://github.com/paulboone/ticgit
* [new branch] master -> pb/master
* [new branch] ticgit -> pb/ticgit

Paul’s master branch is now accessible locally as pb/master—?you can merge it into one of your branches, or you can check out a local branch at that point if you want to inspect it.

Fetching and Pulling from Your Remotes

$ git fetch <remote>

The command goes out to that remote project and pulls down all the data from that remote project that you don’t have yet. After you do this, you should have references to all the branches from that remote, which you can merge in or inspect at any time.

If you clone a repository, the command automatically adds that remote repository under the name “origin”. So, git fetch origin fetches any new work that has been pushed to that server since you cloned (or last fetched from) it.

It’s important to note that the git fetch command only downloads the data to your local repository?—?it doesn’t automatically merge it with any of your work or modify what you’re currently working on. You have to merge it manually into your work when you’re ready.

If your current branch is set up to track a remote branch , you can use the git pull command to automatically fetch and then merge that remote branch into your current branch. By default, the git clone command automatically sets up your local master branch to track the remote master branch on the server you cloned from. Running git pull generally fetches data from the server you originally cloned from and automatically tries to merge it into the code you’re currently working on.

Pushing to Your Remotes

When you have your project at a point that you want to share, you have to push it upstream: git push <remote> <branch>.

If you want to push your master branch to your origin server, then you can run this to push any commits you’ve done back up to the server:

$ git push origin master

This command works only if you cloned from a server to which you have write access and if nobody has pushed in the meantime. If you and someone else clone at the same time and they push upstream and then you push upstream, your push will rightly be rejected. You’ll have to fetch their work first and incorporate it into yours before you’ll be allowed to push.

Inspecting a Remote

If you want to see more information about a particular remote, you can use the git remote show <remote> command. If you run this command with a particular shortname, such as origin, you get something like this:

$ git remote show origin
* remote origin
Fetch URL: https://github.com/schacon/ticgit
Push URL: https://github.com/schacon/ticgit
HEAD branch: master
Remote branches:
master tracked
dev-branch tracked
Local branch configured for 'git pull':
master merges with remote master
Local ref configured for 'git push':
master pushes to master (up to date)

It lists the URL for the remote repository as well as the tracking branch information. The command helpfully tells you that if you’re on the master branch and you run git pull, it will automatically merge the remote’s master branch into the local one after it has been fetched. It also lists all the remote references it has pulled down.

That is a simple example you’re likely to encounter. When you’re using Git more heavily, however, you may see much more information from git remote show:

$ git remote show origin
* remote origin
URL: https://github.com/my-org/complex-project
Fetch URL: https://github.com/my-org/complex-project
Push URL: https://github.com/my-org/complex-project
HEAD branch: master
Remote branches:
master tracked
dev-branch tracked
markdown-strip tracked
issue-43 new (next fetch will store in remotes/origin)
issue-45 new (next fetch will store in remotes/origin)
refs/remotes/origin/issue-11 stale (use 'git remote prune' to remove)
Local branches configured for 'git pull':
dev-branch merges with remote dev-branch
master merges with remote master
Local refs configured for 'git push':
dev-branch pushes to dev-branch (up to date)
markdown-strip pushes to markdown-strip (up to date)
master pushes to master (up to date)

This command shows which branch is automatically pushed to when you run git push while on certain branches. It also shows you which remote branches on the server you don’t yet have, which remote branches you have that have been removed from the server, and multiple local branches that are able to merge automatically with their remote-tracking branch when you run git pull.

Renaming and Removing Remotes

You can run git remote rename to change a remote’s shortname. For instance, if you want to rename pb to paul:

$ git remote rename pb paul

It’s worth mentioning that this changes all your remote-tracking branch names, too. What used to be referenced at pb/master is now at paul/master.

If you want to remove a remote for some reason?—?you’ve moved the server or are no longer using a particular mirror, or perhaps a contributor isn’t contributing anymore?—?you can either use git remote remove or git remote rm:

$ git remote remove paul
Once you delete the reference to a remote this way, all remote-tracking branches and configuration settings associated with that remote are also deleted.