Git branching master vs origin master vs remotes origin master

Question

I think I m on the right track to understand the basic concepts of git   I ve already set up and cloned a remote repository  I also created a server side empty repository  and linked my local repository to it   My problem is that I don t understand the difference between    origin master vs  remotes origin master   As far as I have understood  master is a local branch  and remotes origin master is a remote one    But what exactly is origin master

User · Accepted Answer

Take a clone of a remote repository and run git branch -a (to show all the branches git knows about). It will probably look something like this:

* master
  remotes/origin/HEAD -> origin/master
  remotes/origin/master

Here, master is a branch in the local repository. remotes/origin/master is a branch named master on the remote named origin. You can refer to this as either origin/master, as in:

git diff origin/master..master

You can also refer to it as remotes/origin/master:

git diff remotes/origin/master..master

These are just two different ways of referring to the same thing (incidentally, both of these commands mean "show me the changes between the remote master branch and my master branch).

remotes/origin/HEAD is the default branch for the remote named origin. This lets you simply say origin instead of origin/master.

User · Answer

One clarification  and a point that confused me      remotes origin HEAD is the default branch   is not really correct   remotes origin master was the default branch in the remote repository  last time you checked    HEAD is not a branch  it just points to a branch   Think of HEAD as your working area  When you think of it this way then  git checkout branchname  makes sense with respect to changing your working area files to be that of a particular branch   You  checkout  branch files into your working area  HEAD for all practical purposes is what is visible to you in your working area

User · Answer

I think this git slash notation is probably best understood by looking inside your  git folder     For example  here is a somewhat abbreviated tree of my  git for the LibreOffice source base       In linux sudo apt-get install tree is useful to view this  In Windows I think the tree command might still work   Scroll down and take a look at refs  aka  references   near the bottom     tree        -- branches    -- config    -- description    -- FETCH HEAD    -- gitk cache    -- HEAD    -- hooks           -- applypatch-msg sample            -- index    -- info           -- exclude    -- logs           -- HEAD           -- refs               -- heads                      -- master                      -- remotes                          -- origin               -- remotes                   -- origin                       -- distro                              -- cib                                     -- libreoffice-6-0                              -- collabora                                     -- cp-6 0                              -- lhm                                  -- libreoffice-5-2 backports                       -- HEAD                       -- libreoffice-6-2                       -- master                       -- private                           -- mst                               -- sw redlinehide 4a    -- objects           -- info           -- pack               -- pack-b80087dc57e2b3315f449ca0f1aaa91987bf0c5e idx               -- pack-b80087dc57e2b3315f449ca0f1aaa91987bf0c5e pack               -- pack-eb4e6808029e712d8d9c2671accbbd98aaeb9a04 idx               -- pack-eb4e6808029e712d8d9c2671accbbd98aaeb9a04 pack    -- ORIG HEAD    -- packed-refs    -- refs        -- heads               -- master               -- remotes                   -- origin        -- remotes               -- origin                   -- distro                          -- cib                                 -- libreoffice-6-0                          -- collabora                                 -- cp-6 0                          -- lhm                              -- libreoffice-5-2 backports                   -- HEAD                   -- libreoffice-6-2                   -- master                   -- private                       -- mst                           -- sw redlinehide 4a        -- tags            -- libreoffice-6-2-branch-point    32 directories  45 files     It might have been less confusing if it was laid out like this  but it wasn t   repositories  i e  independent trees   --local      --master     --origin1      --master  --origin2     --master     We have three basic types of references  heads  remotes  and tags     git refs heads holds our local master   git refs remotes can hold a number of remotes  although at the moment we only have origin in it   git refs tags  is discussed elsewhere     origin thus  is our one and only remote   It holds origin master     We find that we have 2 HEADS  pointers to current branches   one local  and one remote     cat  git HEAD                                  local   HEAD - gt  master ref  refs heads master    cat  git refs remotes origin HEAD      remote origin   HEAD - gt  master ref  refs remotes origin master     If you list your branches     git branch -a   master   remotes origin HEAD - gt  origin master   remotes origin aoo aw080   remotes origin aoo trunk   remotes origin distro capgemini cg-4 1   remotes origin distro cib libreoffice-5-0   remotes origin distro cib libreoffice-5-1   remotes origin distro cib libreoffice-5-2          The first branch listed  master  is the only one which is not a remote   So in this case we have one local branch   This is where we ll start our own work from  for our own new branches and subsequent commits    Next  you may have many remote tracking branches  and we do here   You know these are remote tracking branches because they are prefixed with  remotes     The ones shown here are for the remote named origin      So the second line is origin s current branch pointer   Remotes origin  HEAD --points to--  master   This shows that in the remote repository  the current branch is their branch named master   not to be confused with our local branch named master   The remaining branches aren t found in your  git refs  tree  but rather you ll find them in  git packed-refs      When we git fetch we download changes from the remote repository  into our remote tracking repository   When we git merge we merge the changes in this local  remote tracking repository into our working local branch or branches  in this case into our master branch    When we git pull we do both of these two steps in one operation      It s also interesting to note these local and remote UUIDs for master currently point to the same node  aka  commit       cat refs heads master                     local         master 1ca409292272632f443733450313de5a82c54a9c    cat refs remotes origin master            remote origin master 1ca409292272632f443733450313de5a82c54a9c   So our local master points to the same place as the remote s origin master    local  master    remote  origin master     Finally  I think it s also useful to take a look at  git packed-refs    cat packed-refs    pack-refs with  peeled fully-peeled  3c1d4742e649fe9c8aed8c2817fe3e1f3364f298 refs remotes origin aoo aw080 e87c8b7922e9a73e0abb7f9a7a47c9ac3374a826 refs remotes origin aoo trunk b70fdffb041c12f124dcc0822b61bf3450e53137 refs remotes origin distro capgemini cg-4 1 5dbc3f1754809b9489faaf380b1a4bdbcfbb6205 refs remotes origin distro cib libreoffice-5-0 cfdbc96ca47d68d6785fd21829a8d61f49d6e591 refs remotes origin distro cib libreoffice-5-1 5189c8c47461ef09739086e55512fc6a10245273 refs remotes origin distro cib libreoffice-5-2 3bee5917569ca8e6ee3b086458f5b1a917b88ca1 refs remotes origin distro cib libreoffice-5-3 92fbe703f9ca480d3a2b8610d87e991c729edf77 refs remotes origin distro cib libreoffice-5-4 05c0a5df66cc69d75280f05b804cf82f3387d42b refs remotes origin distro cib libreoffice-6-0 7fe193e759b24b90852e6e327115b77114d7b119 refs remotes origin distro cib libreoffice-6-1 8187f7aa413e7ef7b377eea2b057d336bf256867 refs remotes origin distro collabora cd-5 3 7a6b608591e21ef61dc05cff9fc58da531035755 refs remotes origin distro collabora cd-5 3-3 1          No doubt this leaves more questions than answers  but I think it can start to help you answer your own questions about what s what

User · Answer

Technically there aren t actually any  remote  things at all1 in your Git repo  there are just local names that should correspond to the names on another  different repo   The ones named origin whatever will initially match up with those on the repo you cloned-from   git clone ssh   some where out there some path to repo   or git   some where      makes a local copy of the other repo   Along the way it notes all the branches that were there  and the commits those refer-to  and sticks those into your local repo under the names refs remotes origin    Depending on how long you go before you git fetch or equivalent to update  my copy of what s some where out there   they may change their branches around  create new ones  and delete some   When you do your git fetch  or git pull which is really fetch plus merge   your repo will make copies of their new work and change all the refs remotes origin  lt name gt  entries as needed   It s that moment of fetching that makes everything match up  well  that  and the initial clone  and some cases of pushing too   basically whenever Git gets a chance to check   but see caveat below    Git normally has you refer to your own refs heads  lt name gt  as just  lt name gt   and the remote ones as origin  lt name gt   and it all just works because it s obvious which one is which   It s sometimes possible to create your own branch names that make it not obvious  but don t worry about that until it happens   -   Just give Git the shortest name that makes it obvious  and it will go from there  origin master is  where master was over there last time I checked   and master is  where master is over here based on what I have been doing    Run git fetch to update Git on  where master is over there  as needed     Caveat  in versions of Git older than 1 8 4  git fetch has some modes that don t update  where master is over there   more precisely  modes that don t update any remote-tracking branches    Running git fetch origin  or git fetch --all  or even just git fetch  does update   Running git fetch origin master doesn t   Unfortunately  this  doesn t update  mode is triggered by ordinary git pull    This is mainly just a minor annoyance and is fixed in Git 1 8 4 and later      1Well  there is one thing that is called a  remote    But that s also local   The name origin is the thing Git calls  a remote    It s basically just a short name for the URL you used when you did the clone   It s also where the origin in origin master comes from   The name origin master is called a remote-tracking branch  which sometimes gets shortened to  remote branch   especially in older or more informal documentation

User · Answer

origin - This is a custom and most common name to point to remote      git remote add origin https   github com git git git --- You will run this command to link your github project to origin  Here origin is user-defined  You can rename it by   git remote rename old-name new-name     master - The default branch name in Git is master  For both remote and local computer        origin master - This is just a pointer to refer master branch in remote repo  Remember i said origin points to remote      git fetch origin - Downloads objects and refs from remote repository to your local computer  origin master   That means it will not affect your local master branch unless you merge them using   git merge origin master  Remember to checkout the correct branch where you need to merge before run this command  Note  Fetched content is represented as a remote branch  Fetch gives you a chance to review changes before integrating them into your copy of the project  To show changes between yours and remote  git diff master  origin master

User · Answer

I would try to make  ErichBSchulz s answer simpler for beginners    origin master is the state of master branch on remote repository master is the state of master branch on local repository

User · Answer

Short answer for dummies like me  stolen from Torek     origin master is  where master was over there last time I checked  master is  where master is over here based on what I have been doing

[git] Git branching: master vs. origin/master vs. remotes/origin/master

Examples related to git

Examples related to git-remote