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Chapter 8 — Working with Remotes

A remote is a copy of your repository hosted somewhere else — usually GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket.

Listing Remotes

Example: See configured remotes

git remote -v
origin  https://github.com/boringcollege/git-by-example.git (fetch)
origin  https://github.com/boringcollege/git-by-example.git (push)

🧠 What happened? origin is the default name for the remote you cloned from. You can have multiple remotes.

Adding and Removing Remotes

Example: Add a remote

git remote add upstream https://github.com/original-author/project.git

Example: Remove a remote

git remote remove upstream

Example: Rename a remote

git remote rename origin github

Fetching

Fetch downloads new data from the remote but does not change your working files.

Example: Fetch from origin

git fetch origin
remote: Enumerating objects: 5, done.
remote: Total 3 (delta 1), reused 3 (delta 1)
Unpacking objects: 100% (3/3), done.
From https://github.com/boringcollege/git-by-example
   a1b2c3d..d4e5f6g  main       -> origin/main

Example: See what's new

git log main..origin/main --oneline
d4e5f6g Fix typo in README
c3d4e5f Add contributing guidelines

🧠 What happened? git fetch updated your remote-tracking branches (origin/main) without touching your local main. You can inspect the changes before deciding to integrate them.

Pulling

Pull = fetch + merge (or fetch + rebase).

Example: Pull with merge (default)

git pull origin main

Example: Pull with rebase (cleaner history)

git pull --rebase origin main

Example: Set rebase as default for pull

git config --global pull.rebase true

Pushing

Example: Push to the remote

git push origin main

Example: Push a new branch

git switch -c feature/dark-mode
# ... make commits ...
git push -u origin feature/dark-mode
Branch 'feature/dark-mode' set up to track remote branch 'feature/dark-mode' from 'origin'.

🧠 What happened? -u (or --set-upstream) links your local branch to the remote branch. After this, you can just run git push without specifying the remote and branch.

Example: Push rejected (remote has new commits)

git push origin main
! [rejected]        main -> main (fetch first)
error: failed to push some refs
hint: Updates were rejected because the remote contains work that you do not have locally.

Fix: pull first, then push.

git pull --rebase origin main
git push origin main

Example: Force push (after rebase)

git push --force-with-lease origin feature/my-branch

🧠 What happened? --force-with-lease is a safer force push. It refuses to overwrite the remote if someone else has pushed commits you haven't seen. Use it instead of --force.

Tracking Branches

Example: See which local branches track which remote branches

git branch -vv
  feature/login  f7g8h9i [origin/feature/login] Add login page
* main           e4f5a6b [origin/main] Add greet function

Example: Set up tracking for an existing branch

git branch --set-upstream-to=origin/main main

← Chapter 7: Rebasing · Next: Chapter 9 — Stashing →