Chapter 3: Working with Remotes

Section 3.1: Deleting a Remote Branch

To delete a remote branch in Git, you can use either of the following commands:

git push [remote-name] --delete [branch-name]

or

git push [remote-name] :[branch-name]

Section 3.2: Changing Git Remote URL

To check the existing remote URL, use the following command:

git remote -v

To change the repository URL, use the following command:

git remote set-url origin [new-remote-url]

To verify the new remote URL, use the following command:

git remote -v

Section 3.3: List Existing Remotes

To list all existing remotes associated with the repository, use the following command:

git remote

To list all existing remotes in detail, including fetch and push URLs, use either of the following commands:

git remote --verbose

or

git remote -v

Section 3.4: Removing Local Copies of Deleted Remote Branches

To prune deleted branches from a specific remote, use the following command:

git fetch [remote-name] --prune

To prune deleted branches from all remotes, use the following command:

git fetch --all --prune

Section 3.5: Updating from Upstream Repository

To update from the upstream repository, assuming you have set the upstream, use the following commands:

git fetch [remote-name]
git merge [remote-name]/[branch-name]

The git pull command combines a fetch and a merge. You can use it as follows:

git pull --rebase [remote-name] [branch-name]

The git pull command with the --rebase flag combines a fetch and a rebase instead of a merge. You can use it as follows:

git ls-remote --refs

Section 3.7: Adding a New Remote Repository

To add a new remote repository, use the following command:

git remote add upstream [git-repository-url]

Section 3.8: Set Upstream on a New Branch

To create a new branch and set its upstream origin to push to, use the following commands:

git checkout -b [branch-name]
git push --set-upstream origin [branch-name]

After that, you can use git push while you are on that branch.

Section 3.9: Getting Started

To push to a remote branch, use the following syntax:

git push [remote-name] [branch-name]

Example:

git push origin master

Section 3.10: Renaming a Remote

To rename a remote, use the following command:

git remote rename [old-name] [new-name]

To check the existing remote name, use the following command:

git remote

To check the existing remote with URL, use the following command:

git remote -v

Section 3.11: Show information about a Specific Remote

To output information about a known remote, such as ‘origin’, use the following command:

git remote show origin

To print just the remote’s URL, you can use either of the following commands:

git config --get remote.origin.url

or

git remote get-url origin

With Git version 2.7 or later, the git remote get-url command is available and can be used to obtain the remote’s URL.

Section 3.12: Set the URL for a Specific Remote

To change the URL of an existing remote, use the following command:

git remote set-url remote-name url

Replace remote-name with the name of the remote you want to modify, and url with the new URL.

Section 3.13: Get the URL for a Specific Remote

To obtain the URL for an existing remote, you can use the following command:

git remote get-url <name>

By default, if you don’t provide a specific remote name, it will return the URL for the origin remote:

git remote get-url origin

Section 3.14: Changing a Remote Repository

To change the URL of the repository that a remote points to, you can use the set-url option with the following command:

git remote set-url <remote_name> <remote_repository_url>

Replace <remote_name> with the name of the remote you want to modify, and <remote_repository_url> with the new URL.

For example:

git remote set-url heroku https://git.heroku.com/fictional-remote-repository.git

This command changes the URL of the heroku remote to the specified repository URL.