What is Git Origin

Understanding Git and its terminologies is essential for any developer or programmer. git origin is one of them. So today, let’s dive into the concept of “git origin” in a simple and straightforward manner.

In Git, “git origin” is like a nickname for the place where your project is stored online. Imagine it as a friendly shortcut to the remote home of your project.

When you start working on a project, you usually keep a copy of it on your computer. This copy is called the “local repository“. But after a certain version, you hosted this local project on a website like GitHub or GitLab. That’s the “remote repository“.

Now, “git origin” is the name given to this remote place where your project lives on the server. It’s like giving a simple name to your friend’s house, so you can visit without remembering the full address every time.

For example, if your project is on GitHub, when you copy it to your computer, you’ll automatically call that place “git origin“. So whenever you want to send your project updates back to the remote place (like sharing pictures with your friends), you say “git push origin“. And Git knows exactly where to send those updates.

So, “git origin” is just a friendly way to talk with the online home of your project. It helps you easily connect with it and share your work without any complexity.

Also Read: What is a Gist in Github – How to use it?

Now let me show you an example to help you understand better:

Let’s say you have a project on GitHub called “my-awesome-project” and you want to work on it locally on your computer. Below is the process to do that step by step.

Step 1: Clone the remote repository to your local machine:

First, you need to clone that remote repository to your local computer using below git command.

git clone https://github.com/your-username/my-awesome-project.git

Step2: Check Connection

Now, your local repository is connected to the remote repository on GitHub, and the remote repository is automatically named “origin“. You can check this by running the following command:

git remote -v

Once you run the above command you should see the below output:

origin  https://github.com/your-username/my-awesome-project.git (fetch)
origin  https://github.com/your-username/my-awesome-project.git (push)

Step 3: Work on your project locally

Now you can modify any files in your local repository, which we always do to improve our code and functionality or any data, image, etc. You change or add things save inside this directory (local repository).

Step 4: Update Remote Repository

Once you’ve made all the required changes and want to update the remote repository on GitHub, you can use the following commands:

git add .
git commit -m "Your commit message"
git push origin master

In this example, “origin” is used as a reference to the remote repository URL. So, when you run git push origin master, Git knows that it needs to push your changes to the remote repository named “origin“.

Conclusion

So, to sum it up, “git origin” is simply the default name given to the remote repository where your local repository was cloned from. It allows you to interact with the remote repository easily using this alias instead of typing the full URL every time you need to communicate with it.

This is it for this article. If you want to learn basics of Github take this free Udemy course. Since it is a free course, you will not get any certificate after completing this.

Above free course will only teach you how to use Github. If you want to take Github as your career like a DevOps engineer, then you must learn theory along with commands. For that, I will strongly recommend you below Udemy course. This one is paid, but trust me you will get more knowledge than what you are paying.

If you have any questions or suggestions regarding this article, please let me know in the comment section below. If you have any other professional queries, please reach out to me over LinkedIn.