Zoom Remotes

Last updated: January 4, 2023

Zoom session 3 — part 3

What are remotes?

Remotes are versions of a project that reside outside it. "Outside" can be anywhere, including on an external drive or even on the same machine. Often however, remotes are on a different machine to serve as backup or on a network (possibly the internet) to be accessible by several persons and serve as a syncing hub for collaborations.

A number of online Git repository managers and hosting services have become popular remotes for Git projects. These include GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket. In this workshop, we will create a remote on GitHub.

A project can have several remotes. These remotes are characterized by an address (or a path if they are local) and identified by a name of your choice.

When you clone a repository, the initial repository automatically becomes a remote of your newly created clone and is given the name origin by Git.

Since you started your project locally, it does not have any remote.

Adding a GitHub remote

To add a GitHub remote to it, you first need to create a new GitHub repository.

Creating an empty repository on GitHub

Go to https://github.com, login, and go to your home page (https://github.com/<user>).

From there, select the Repositories tab, then click the green New button.

Enter the name you want for your repo, without spaces. It can be the same name you have for your project on your computer (it would be sensible and make things less confusing), but it doesn't have to be.

You can make your repository public or private. Choose the private option if your research contains sensitive data or you do not want to share your project with the world. If you want to develop open source projects, of course, you want to make them public.

Now, you have this empty repository on GitHub, but it is not connected to your local repository.

Adding the new GitHub repo as a remote

Click on the Code green drop-down button, select SSH (if you have set SSH for your GitHub account) or HTTPS (if you haven't) and copy the address.

Then, go back to your command line, cd inside your project if you aren't already there and add your remote.

You add a remote with:

git remote add <remote-name> <remote-address>

<remote-name> is only a convenience name that will identify that remote. You can choose any name, but since Git automatically call the remote origin when you clone a repo, it is common practice to use origin as the name for the first remote.

<remote-address> is the address of your remote in the https form or—if you have set SSH for your GitHub account—the SSH form.

Example (using an SSH address):

git remote add origin git@github.com:<user>/<repo>.git

Example (using an HTTPS address):

git remote add origin https://github.com/<user>/<repo>.git

(Paste the address you have just copied on GitHub after git remote add origin).

If you were working alone on this project and only wanted to have a remote for backup, you would be set.

If you don't want to grant others write access to the project and only accept contributions through pull requests, you are also set.

If you want to grant your collaborators write access to the project however, you need to add them to it.

Inviting collaborators to a GitHub repo

Go to your GitHub project page
Click on the Settings tab
Click on the Manage access section on the left-hand side (you will be prompted for your GitHub password)
Click on the Invite a collaborator green button
Invite your collaborators with one of their GitHub user name, their email address, or their full name

Getting information on remotes

To list remotes, run:

git remote

To list the remotes with their addresses:

git remote -v

You can see that your local project now has a remote called origin and that it has the address of your GitHub repo.

To get yet more information about a particular remote, you can run:

git remote show <remote-name>

For instance, to inspect your new remote, run:

git remote show origin

Managing remotes

You rename a remote with:

git remote rename <old-remote-name> <new-remote-name>

And you delete a remote with:

git remote remove <remote-name>

You can change the url of the remote with:

git remote set-url <remote-name> <new-url> [<old-url>]

Working with remotes

Downloading data from the remote

If you collaborate on your project through the GitHub remote, you will have to download data added by your teammates to keep your local project up to date.

To download new data from the remote, you have 2 options: git fetch and git pull.

Fetching changes

Fetching downloads the data from your remote that you don't already have in your local version of the project.

git fetch <remote-name>

The branches on the remote are now accessible locally as <remote-name>/<branch>. You can inspect them or you can merge them into your local branches.

Example: To fetch from your new GitHub remote, you would run:

git fetch origin

Pulling changes

Pulling does 2 things: it fetches the data (as we just saw) and it then merges the changes onto your local branches.

git pull <remote-name> <branch>

Example

git pull origin master

If your branch is already tracking a remote branch (see below), then you simply need to run:

git pull

Now, how do you upload data to the remote?

Pushing to a remote

Uploading data to the remote is called pushing and is done with:

git push <remote-name> <branch-name>

To push your branch master to the remote origin:

git push origin master

You can also set an upstream branch to track a local branch with the -u flag:

git push -u origin master

From now on, all you have to run when you are on master is:

git push

Git knows that your local master branch is being tracked by the upstream master branch.