Git Remote#

Often our frenemies (read: coworkers) make code changes that we need to begrudgingly accept into our pristine bug-free repos. /s

This is where the “distributed” in “distributed version control system” comes from. We can have “remotes”, which are just external repos with mostly the same Git history as our local repo.

When it comes to Git (the CLI tool), there really isn’t a “central” repo. GitHub is just someone else’s repo. Only by convention and convenience have we, as developers, started to use GitHub as a “source of truth” for our code.

Adding a Remote#

In git, another repo is called a “remote.” The standard convention is that when you’re treating the remote as the “authoritative source of truth” (such as GitHub) you would name it the “origin”.

By “authoritative source of truth” we mean that it’s the one you and your team treat as the “true” repo. It’s the one that contains the most up-to-date version of the accepted code.

Command Syntax#

git remote add <name>(origin most of time) <uri>(yanked repo)

Inside our new repo, add webflyx as a remote. Give it the name origin. The uri should just be a relative path to the webflyx directory, in our case, ../webflyx.

Log Remote#

The git log command isn’t only useful for your local repo. You can log the commits of a remote repo as well!

git log remote/branch

For example, if you wanted to see the commits of a branch named primeagen from a remote named origin you would run:

git log origin/primeagen

Merge#

Just as we merged branches within a single local repo, we can also merge branches between local and remote repos.

Syntax#

git merge remote/branch

For example, if you wanted to merge the primeagen branch of the remote origin into your local main branch, you would run this inside the local repo while on the main branch:

git merge origin/alperen

GitHub Repository#

Just like we created a webflyx-local repo and used webflyx as a remote, GitHub makes it easy to create “remote” repos that are hosted on their servers.

git remote add origin https://github.com/your-username/webflyx.git