What is Origin?

Goals

• Learn about naming remote repositories.

Execute:

git remote

Output:

$ git remote
origin

We see that the cloned repository knows about a remote repository named origin. Let’s see if we can get more information about origin:

Execute:

git remote show origin

Output:

$ git remote show origin
warning: more than one branch.master.remote
* remote origin
  Fetch URL: /Users/jim/Downloads/git_tutorial/work/hello
  Push  URL: /Users/jim/Downloads/git_tutorial/work/hello
  HEAD branch: master
  Remote branches:
    greet  tracked
    master tracked
  Local branch configured for 'git pull':
    master merges with remote master
              and with remote master
  Local ref configured for 'git push':
    master pushes to master (up to date)

Now we see that the remote repository “origin” is simply the original hello repository. Remote repositories typically live on a separate machine, possibly a centralized server. As we can see here, however, they can just as well point to a repository on the same machine. There is nothing particularly special about the name “origin”, however the convention is to use the name “origin” for the primary centralized repository (if there is one).