GitHub's collaborative approach to development depends on publishing commits from your local repository for other people to view, fetch, and update.

A remote URL is Git's fancy way of saying "the place where your code is stored." That URL could be your repository on GitHub, or another user's fork, or even on a completely different server.

You can only push to two types of URL addresses:

  • An HTTPS URL like https://[hostname]/user/repo.git
  • An SSH URL, like git@[hostname]:user/repo.git

Git associates a remote URL with a name, and your default remote is usually called origin.

For information on the differences between these URLs, see "Which remote URL should I use?"

Creating remotes

You can use the git remote add command to match a remote URL with a name. For example, you'd type the following in the command line:

git remote add origin  <REMOTE_URL>

This associates the name origin with the REMOTE_URL.

You can use the command git remote set-url to change a remote's URL. remote:docs/about-remote-repositories.md