Sangam-Git

Remotes: the shared copy on the server

A remote is a version of your repository that lives somewhere else — usually on a server like Sangam-Git — that you and your team sync with. It's the common meeting point for everyone's work.

Remember that a repo on your laptop is your copy (see clone). Your teammate in Chennai has their copy. How do these copies share work? Through a remote: a shared repository on a server that everyone pushes to and pulls from.

origin: the default remote

When you clone a repo, Git automatically saves the server's address under a nickname: origin. So instead of typing the full URL every time, you just say origin.

See your remotes:

git remote -v

origin  https://sangam.example.com/acme/payments.git (fetch)
origin  https://sangam.example.com/acme/payments.git (push)

origin is just a name — nothing magic about it. It's the label for "the team's copy on Sangam-Git."

How work flows

Here's the whole picture with three copies of one project:

   Priya's laptop  ──push──►  ┌─────────────┐  ◄──push──  Arjun's laptop
   (local repo)    ◄──pull──  │   origin    │  ──pull──►  (local repo)
                              │ (Sangam-Git)│
                              └─────────────┘

Nobody edits origin directly. Everyone works locally, then:

  • pushes their commits up to origin to share them, and
  • pulls others' commits down from origin to stay up to date.

Adding a remote yourself

If you started a repo with git init (no clone), there's no remote yet. You add one after creating an empty repo on Sangam-Git:

git remote add origin https://sangam.example.com/acme/payments.git
git push -u origin main

The first line teaches your local repo where the server is. The second sends your main branch up for the first time. (The -u links them so future pushes are just git push.)

More than one remote

Usually you only have origin. But you can have several — for example, if you're migrating from GitHub to Sangam-Git, you might briefly have both:

git remote add sangam https://sangam.example.com/acme/payments.git

Now git push sangam main sends to Sangam-Git and git push origin main still goes to the old host. Once you've fully moved, you drop the old one.

In one line: a remote is the shared copy. origin is its usual name. Push sends work to it; pull brings work from it. That's push and pull, next.