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Git from zero to hero: remotes and GitHub

Part 6 of the Git guide: clone, push, fetch and pull, remote-tracking branches and ahead/behind, what to do when a push is rejected, force-with-lease and tags.

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Everything in parts 1 to 5 lives on your computer. To share the recipe book you need a remote: a copy of the repository somewhere else, usually GitHub.

Working with GitHub

If the project already exists on GitHub, clone it:

git clone https://github.com/dana/recipes.git

If you started locally, create an empty repository on GitHub, then connect to it and push:

git remote add origin https://github.com/dana/recipes.git
git push -u origin main

origin is the nickname of that remote, and -u links your local main to it (with push.autoSetupRemote from part 1, plain git push does this for new branches).

Two repositories. The remote origin holds commits A, B, C. Your computer holds A and B and a remote-tracking label origin/main. git fetch downloads C into origin/main without touching your own main. git push uploads your commits to origin. git pull is fetch followed by merge.

  • git fetch downloads what’s new into origin/main but doesn’t touch your own branch. It’s always safe.
  • git pull is fetch plus merging it into your current branch. (git pull --rebase fetches, then rebases.)
  • git push uploads your commits.

Remote-tracking branches, upstream and ahead/behind

After git clone or git fetch, git branch -a shows branches like origin/main. These are remote-tracking branches: your computer’s last-known copy of the remote. You can’t commit onto them; only fetch, pull and push move them.

A local branch can be linked to one of them. That link is its upstream, and it’s how git status and git branch -vv tell you where you stand:

git status

On branch main
Your branch is ahead of 'origin/main' by 1 commit.
  (use "git push" to publish your local commits)

git branch -vv

* main  9c1d4e2 [origin/main: ahead 1] Add salt to pasta
  pizza b7e3f10 [origin/pizza] Add baking time

Ahead means you have commits the remote doesn’t, so push. Behind means the remote has commits you don’t, so pull. Diverged means both, and you’ll need to merge or rebase. Run git fetch first so the numbers are fresh.

When a push is rejected

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

Someone pushed to main since you last synced, and Git won’t let you overwrite their commits. Run git pull (or git pull --rebase), resolve any conflict, then git push again. Pulling before you start and before you push keeps this rare.

The tempting shortcut, git push --force, overwrites the remote and deletes their commits. Don’t, on shared branches. If you rewrote your own branch with a rebase, use git push --force-with-lease: it refuses when the remote has commits you haven’t seen.

You can only push to a repository you can write to. For someone else’s project, fork it first. The day-to-day loop on GitHub, branch, push, pull request, merge, is in GitHub: pull requests.

Tags

A tag names a commit permanently, usually for releases:

git tag -a v1.0 -m "First release"
git push --tags

For the full command list, with flags for everything in this guide, see my Git cheat sheet. When something feels wrong, git status and git log --oneline --graph --all usually tell you exactly where you are.

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