[git] How can I find the location of origin/master in git, and how do I change it?

I'm a Git newbie. I recently moved a Rails project from Subversion to Git. I followed the tutorial here: http://www.simplisticcomplexity.com/2008/03/05/cleanly-migrate-your-subversion-repository-to-a-git-repository/

I am also using unfuddle.com to store my code. I make changes on my Mac laptop on the train to/from work and then push them to unfuddle when I have a network connection using the following command:

git push unfuddle master

I use Capistrano for deployments and pull code from the unfuddle repository using the master branch.

Lately I've noticed the following message when I run "git status" on my laptop:

# On branch master
# Your branch is ahead of 'origin/master' by 11 commits.
#
nothing to commit (working directory clean)

And I'm confused as to why. I thought my laptop was the origin... but don't know if either the fact that I originally pulled from Subversion or push to Unfuddle is what's causing the message to show up. How can I:

  1. Find out where Git thinks 'origin/master' is?
  2. If it's somewhere else, how do I turn my laptop into the 'origin/master'?
  3. Get this message to go away. It makes me think Git is unhappy about something.

My mac is running Git version 1.6.0.1.


When I run git remote show origin as suggested by dbr, I get the following:

~/Projects/GeekFor/geekfor 10:47 AM $ git remote show origin
fatal: '/Users/brian/Projects/GeekFor/gf/.git': unable to chdir or not a git archive
fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly

When I run git remote -v as suggested by Aristotle Pagaltzis, I get the following:

~/Projects/GeekFor/geekfor 10:33 AM $ git remote -v
origin  /Users/brian/Projects/GeekFor/gf/.git
unfuddle    [email protected]:spilth/geekfor.git

Now, interestingly, I'm working on my project in the geekfor directory but it says my origin is my local machine in the gf directory. I believe gf was the temporary directory I used when converting my project from Subversion to Git and probably where I pushed to unfuddle from. Then I believe I checked out a fresh copy from unfuddle to the geekfor directory.

So it looks like I should follow dbr's advice and do:

git remote rm origin
git remote add origin [email protected]:spilth/geekfor.git

This question is related to git git-push git-remote

The answer is


I was wondering the same thing about my repo. In my case I had an old remote that I wasn't pushing to anymore so I needed to remove it.

Get list of remotes:

git remote

Remove the one that you don't need

git remote rm {insert remote to remove}

I had a problem that was similar to this where my working directory was ahead of origin by X commits but the git pull was resulting in Everything up-to-date. I did manage to fix it by following this advice. I'm posting this here in case it helps someone else with a similar problem.

The basic fix is as follows:

$ git push {remote} {localbranch}:{remotebranch}

Where the words in brackets should be replaced by your remote name, your local branch name and your remote branch name. e.g.

$ git push origin master:master

sometimes there's a difference between the local cached version of origin master (origin/master) and the true origin master.

If you run git remote update this will resynch origin master with origin/master

see the accepted answer to this question

Differences between git pull origin master & git pull origin/master


I thought my laptop was the origin…

That’s kind of nonsensical: origin refers to the default remote repository – the one you usually fetch/pull other people’s changes from.

How can I:

  1. git remote -v will show you what origin is; origin/master is your “bookmark” for the last known state of the master branch of the origin repository, and your own master is a tracking branch for origin/master. This is all as it should be.

  2. You don’t. At least it makes no sense for a repository to be the default remote repository for itself.

  3. It isn’t. It’s merely telling you that you have made so-and-so many commits locally which aren’t in the remote repository (according to the last known state of that repository).


I am struggling with this problem and none of the previous answers tackle the question as I see it. I have stripped the problem back down to its basics to see if I can make my problem clear.

I create a new repository (rep1), put one file in it and commit it.

mkdir rep1
cd rep1
git init
echo "Line1" > README
git add README
git commit -m "Commit 1"

I create a clone of rep1 and call it rep2. I look inside rep2 and see the file is correct.

cd ~
git clone ~/rep1 rep2
cat ~/rep2/README

In rep1 I make a single change to the file and commit it. Then in rep1 I create a remote to point to rep2 and push the changes.

cd ~/rep1
<change file and commit>
git remote add rep2 ~/rep2
git push rep2 master

Now when I go into rep2 and do a 'git status' I get told I am ahead of origin.

# On branch master
# Your branch is ahead of 'origin/master' by 1 commit.
#
# Changes to be committed:
#   (use "git reset HEAD <file>..." to unstage)
#
#   modified:   README
#

README in rep2 is as it was originally, before the second commit. The only modifications I have done are to rep1 and all I wanted to do was push them out to rep2. What is it I am not grasping?


It is possible to reset to a specific commit before your own commits take place.

$ git status
# On branch master
# Your branch is ahead of 'origin/master' by 2 commits.
#
nothing to commit (working directory clean)

Use git log to find what commit was the commit you had before the local changes took place.

$ git log
commit 3368e1c5b8a47135a34169c885e8dd5ba01af5bb
...
commit baf8d5e7da9e41fcd37d63ae9483ee0b10bfac8e
...

Take note of the local commits and reset directly to the previous commit:

git reset --hard baf8d5e7da9e41fcd37d63ae9483ee0b10bfac8e

I am struggling with this problem and none of the previous answers tackle the question as I see it. I have stripped the problem back down to its basics to see if I can make my problem clear.

I create a new repository (rep1), put one file in it and commit it.

mkdir rep1
cd rep1
git init
echo "Line1" > README
git add README
git commit -m "Commit 1"

I create a clone of rep1 and call it rep2. I look inside rep2 and see the file is correct.

cd ~
git clone ~/rep1 rep2
cat ~/rep2/README

In rep1 I make a single change to the file and commit it. Then in rep1 I create a remote to point to rep2 and push the changes.

cd ~/rep1
<change file and commit>
git remote add rep2 ~/rep2
git push rep2 master

Now when I go into rep2 and do a 'git status' I get told I am ahead of origin.

# On branch master
# Your branch is ahead of 'origin/master' by 1 commit.
#
# Changes to be committed:
#   (use "git reset HEAD <file>..." to unstage)
#
#   modified:   README
#

README in rep2 is as it was originally, before the second commit. The only modifications I have done are to rep1 and all I wanted to do was push them out to rep2. What is it I am not grasping?


It's waiting for you to "push". Try:

$ git push


I had this problem recently and I figured it was because I had deleted some files that I did not need anymore. The problem is that git does not know that the files have been deleted and it sees that the server still has it. (server = origin)

So I ran

git rm $(git ls-files --deleted)

And then ran a commit and push.

That solved the issue.


I am a git newbie as well. I had the same problem with 'your branch is ahead of origin/master by N commits' messages. Doing the suggested 'git diff origin/master' did show some diffs that I did not care to keep. So ...

Since my git clone was for hosting, and I wanted an exact copy of the master repo, and did not care to keep any local changes, I decided to save off my entire repo, and create a new one:

(on the hosting machine)

mv myrepo myrepo
git clone USER@MASTER_HOST:/REPO_DIR myrepo

For expediency, I used to make changes to the clone on my hosting machine. No more. I will make those changes to the master, git commit there, and do a git pull. Hopefully, this should keep my git clone on the hosting machine in complete sync.

/Nara


I thought my laptop was the origin…

That’s kind of nonsensical: origin refers to the default remote repository – the one you usually fetch/pull other people’s changes from.

How can I:

  1. git remote -v will show you what origin is; origin/master is your “bookmark” for the last known state of the master branch of the origin repository, and your own master is a tracking branch for origin/master. This is all as it should be.

  2. You don’t. At least it makes no sense for a repository to be the default remote repository for itself.

  3. It isn’t. It’s merely telling you that you have made so-and-so many commits locally which aren’t in the remote repository (according to the last known state of that repository).


It is possible to reset to a specific commit before your own commits take place.

$ git status
# On branch master
# Your branch is ahead of 'origin/master' by 2 commits.
#
nothing to commit (working directory clean)

Use git log to find what commit was the commit you had before the local changes took place.

$ git log
commit 3368e1c5b8a47135a34169c885e8dd5ba01af5bb
...
commit baf8d5e7da9e41fcd37d63ae9483ee0b10bfac8e
...

Take note of the local commits and reset directly to the previous commit:

git reset --hard baf8d5e7da9e41fcd37d63ae9483ee0b10bfac8e

I had a problem that was similar to this where my working directory was ahead of origin by X commits but the git pull was resulting in Everything up-to-date. I did manage to fix it by following this advice. I'm posting this here in case it helps someone else with a similar problem.

The basic fix is as follows:

$ git push {remote} {localbranch}:{remotebranch}

Where the words in brackets should be replaced by your remote name, your local branch name and your remote branch name. e.g.

$ git push origin master:master

I had the problem "Your branch is ahead of 'origin/master' by nn commits." when i pushed to a remote repository with:

git push ssh://[email protected]/yyy/zzz.git

When i found that my remote adress was in the file .git/FETCH_HEAD and used:

git push

the problem disappeared.


It's waiting for you to "push". Try:

$ git push


I was wondering the same thing about my repo. In my case I had an old remote that I wasn't pushing to anymore so I needed to remove it.

Get list of remotes:

git remote

Remove the one that you don't need

git remote rm {insert remote to remove}

I thought my laptop was the origin…

That’s kind of nonsensical: origin refers to the default remote repository – the one you usually fetch/pull other people’s changes from.

How can I:

  1. git remote -v will show you what origin is; origin/master is your “bookmark” for the last known state of the master branch of the origin repository, and your own master is a tracking branch for origin/master. This is all as it should be.

  2. You don’t. At least it makes no sense for a repository to be the default remote repository for itself.

  3. It isn’t. It’s merely telling you that you have made so-and-so many commits locally which aren’t in the remote repository (according to the last known state of that repository).


I came to this question looking for an explanation about what the message "your branch is ahead by..." means, in the general scheme of git. There was no answer to that here, but since this question currently shows up at the top of Google when you search for the phrase "Your branch is ahead of 'origin/master'", and I have since figured out what the message really means, I thought I'd post the info here.

So, being a git newbie, I can see that the answer I needed was a distinctly newbie answer. Specifically, what the "your branch is ahead by..." phrase means is that there are files you've added and committed to your local repository, but have never pushed to the origin. The intent of this message is further obfuscated by the fact that "git diff", at least for me, showed no differences. It wasn't until I ran "git diff origin/master" that I was told that there were differences between my local repository, and the remote master.

So, to be clear:


"your branch is ahead by..." => You need to push to the remote master. Run "git diff origin/master" to see what the differences are between your local repository and the remote master repository.


Hope this helps other newbies.

(Also, I recognize that there are configuration subtleties that may partially invalidate this solution, such as the fact that the master may not actually be "remote", and that "origin" is a reconfigurable name used by convention, etc. But newbies do not care about that sort of thing. We want simple, straightforward answers. We can read about the subtleties later, once we've solved the pressing problem.)

Earl


[ Solution ]

$ git push origin

^ this solved it for me. What it did, it synchronized my master (on laptop) with "origin" that's on the remote server.


I am a git newbie as well. I had the same problem with 'your branch is ahead of origin/master by N commits' messages. Doing the suggested 'git diff origin/master' did show some diffs that I did not care to keep. So ...

Since my git clone was for hosting, and I wanted an exact copy of the master repo, and did not care to keep any local changes, I decided to save off my entire repo, and create a new one:

(on the hosting machine)

mv myrepo myrepo
git clone USER@MASTER_HOST:/REPO_DIR myrepo

For expediency, I used to make changes to the clone on my hosting machine. No more. I will make those changes to the master, git commit there, and do a git pull. Hopefully, this should keep my git clone on the hosting machine in complete sync.

/Nara


I had the problem "Your branch is ahead of 'origin/master' by nn commits." when i pushed to a remote repository with:

git push ssh://[email protected]/yyy/zzz.git

When i found that my remote adress was in the file .git/FETCH_HEAD and used:

git push

the problem disappeared.


[ Solution ]

$ git push origin

^ this solved it for me. What it did, it synchronized my master (on laptop) with "origin" that's on the remote server.


I came to this question looking for an explanation about what the message "your branch is ahead by..." means, in the general scheme of git. There was no answer to that here, but since this question currently shows up at the top of Google when you search for the phrase "Your branch is ahead of 'origin/master'", and I have since figured out what the message really means, I thought I'd post the info here.

So, being a git newbie, I can see that the answer I needed was a distinctly newbie answer. Specifically, what the "your branch is ahead by..." phrase means is that there are files you've added and committed to your local repository, but have never pushed to the origin. The intent of this message is further obfuscated by the fact that "git diff", at least for me, showed no differences. It wasn't until I ran "git diff origin/master" that I was told that there were differences between my local repository, and the remote master.

So, to be clear:


"your branch is ahead by..." => You need to push to the remote master. Run "git diff origin/master" to see what the differences are between your local repository and the remote master repository.


Hope this helps other newbies.

(Also, I recognize that there are configuration subtleties that may partially invalidate this solution, such as the fact that the master may not actually be "remote", and that "origin" is a reconfigurable name used by convention, etc. But newbies do not care about that sort of thing. We want simple, straightforward answers. We can read about the subtleties later, once we've solved the pressing problem.)

Earl


sometimes there's a difference between the local cached version of origin master (origin/master) and the true origin master.

If you run git remote update this will resynch origin master with origin/master

see the accepted answer to this question

Differences between git pull origin master & git pull origin/master


I thought my laptop was the origin…

That’s kind of nonsensical: origin refers to the default remote repository – the one you usually fetch/pull other people’s changes from.

How can I:

  1. git remote -v will show you what origin is; origin/master is your “bookmark” for the last known state of the master branch of the origin repository, and your own master is a tracking branch for origin/master. This is all as it should be.

  2. You don’t. At least it makes no sense for a repository to be the default remote repository for itself.

  3. It isn’t. It’s merely telling you that you have made so-and-so many commits locally which aren’t in the remote repository (according to the last known state of that repository).


I had this problem recently and I figured it was because I had deleted some files that I did not need anymore. The problem is that git does not know that the files have been deleted and it sees that the server still has it. (server = origin)

So I ran

git rm $(git ls-files --deleted)

And then ran a commit and push.

That solved the issue.


Examples related to git

Does the target directory for a git clone have to match the repo name? Git fatal: protocol 'https' is not supported Git is not working after macOS Update (xcrun: error: invalid active developer path (/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools) git clone: Authentication failed for <URL> destination path already exists and is not an empty directory SSL_connect: SSL_ERROR_SYSCALL in connection to github.com:443 GitLab remote: HTTP Basic: Access denied and fatal Authentication How can I switch to another branch in git? VS 2017 Git Local Commit DB.lock error on every commit How to remove an unpushed outgoing commit in Visual Studio?

Examples related to git-push

Fix GitLab error: "you are not allowed to push code to protected branches on this project"? ! [rejected] master -> master (fetch first) Git - What is the difference between push.default "matching" and "simple" error: src refspec master does not match any Issue pushing new code in Github Can't push to GitHub because of large file which I already deleted Changing the Git remote 'push to' default What does '--set-upstream' do? Git push hangs when pushing to Github? fatal: 'origin' does not appear to be a git repository

Examples related to git-remote

Why does Git tell me "No such remote 'origin'" when I try to push to origin? Git - What is the difference between push.default "matching" and "simple" error: src refspec master does not match any How to connect to a remote Git repository? Changing the Git remote 'push to' default What does '--set-upstream' do? Git: How to remove remote origin from Git repo Git push error: "origin does not appear to be a git repository" How to add a local repo and treat it as a remote repo Git branching: master vs. origin/master vs. remotes/origin/master