Module 5 Lesson 1: Adding and removing remotes

Everything we've done so far has happened on your local computer. But Git's true power is collaboration. To share your code or download others' work, you need to connect your local repository to a Remote.

In this lesson, we learn how to manage these connections using the git remote command.

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1. What is a Remote?

A remote is simply a URL pointing to a copy of your repository stored on another server (like GitHub, GitLab, or a company server).

A single local repository can have multiple remotes. For example, you might have one remote for your personal backup and another for the official team project.

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2. The origin Convention

When you git clone a repository, Git automatically creates a remote named origin.

• origin is just a nickname. Git uses it by default, but you could call it cloud, backup, or server if you wanted.

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3. Managing Remotes

Adding a Remote

If you started a project with git init, you need to manually connect it to the cloud:

git remote add origin https://github.com/username/project.git

Viewing Remotes

To see which remotes are currently configured:

git remote -v

(The -v stands for "verbose," showing you the fetch and push URLs).

Renaming and Removing Remotes

If you made a typo or moved your project to a new server:

# Rename 'origin' to 'github'
git remote rename origin github

# Remove a connection entirely
git remote remove github

Changing the URL

If you switched from HTTPS to SSH:

git remote set-url origin git@github.com:username/project.git

graph LR
    Local["Local Repo"] -- "git remote add" --> URL["https://github..."]
    URL -- "Nickname" --> Origin["origin"]
    Origin -- "git push" --> GitHub["GitHub Server"]

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4. Multiple Remotes: The "Upstream" Pattern

In open-source development, you often have two remotes:

1. origin: Your personal "fork" (copy) of the project where you have permission to save changes.
2. upstream: The original "official" project. You use this to download the latest updates from the main maintainers.

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Lesson Exercise

Goal: Configure a remote nickname.

1. Go to your git-practice repo.
2. Run git remote -v. It should be empty.
3. Pretend you have a GitHub project. Run git remote add origin https://github.com/example/practice.git.
4. Run git remote -v again. Do you see the "origin" nickname mapped to the URL?
5. Rename "origin" to "cloud".
6. Remove "cloud".

Observation: You'll see that remotes are just "address book entries" for your repository. They don't send any data yet; they just tell Git where the data should go when you're ready.

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Summary

In this lesson, we established:

• Remotes are external links to other copies of your repository.
• origin is the default name given to the primary remote.
• git remote add, rename, remove, and set-url are your management tools.
• A repository can have multiple remotes for different purposes (e.g., origin vs upstream).

Next Lesson: Now that we have an address, let’s send some data. Welcome to Lesson 2: Pushing and pulling changes.