Git Remotes for Beginners: Inspect, Rename and Remove

In the previous post, I introduced you to the concept of Git remotes. I showed you that a Git repository can have more than one remote and how you can fetch data from a particular remote.

In this post, I am about to answer the following questions:

1. How do you view more details about a particular remote? The branches present in the remote, and how those branches map to your local branches.
2. How do you rename a remote?
3. How do you stop tracking (remove) a remote from your Git repository?

View (Inspect) a Git remote

The command to achieve this is: git remote show <shortname>. For example, the sample output of running git remote show origin is shown below.

* remote origin
  Fetch URL: [e-mail]:ayushpoddar/colorls.git
  Push  URL: [e-mail]:ayushpoddar/colorls.git
  HEAD branch: main
  Remote branches:
    color-hidden-files  tracked
    main                tracked
    show-abs-path-xargs tracked
    size-in-bytes       tracked
  Local branches configured for 'git pull':
    color-hidden-files  merges with remote color-hidden-files
    main                merges with remote main
    show-abs-path-xargs merges with remote show-abs-path-xargs
    size-in-bytes       merges with remote size-in-bytes
  Local refs configured for 'git push':
    color-hidden-files  pushes to color-hidden-files  (up to date)
    main                pushes to main                (up to date)
    show-abs-path-xargs pushes to show-abs-path-xargs (up to date)
    size-in-bytes       pushes to size-in-bytes       (up to date)

I want you make the following observations:

• This command outputs the full URL of the remote that the shortname is mapped to.
• The list of branches in remote have been "fetched" to your local repository.
• It lists the mapping between your local branches and remote branches. This helps you with knowing the remote branch that will be used when running git pull or git push on a local branch.

If you are wondering if the branch names in remote and the corresponding branch names in local can be different, I would encourage you to read this Github article.

How to rename a remote shortname?

Simple command.

git remote rename <old-shortname> <new-shortname>

How to remove a remote?

If you want to stop tracking a remote, you need to remove all references to the remote from your local repository. The command to do so is:

git remote remove <shortname>

# rm is an alias for remove
git remote rm <shortname>

Final words

After reading the first post and this post, you are equipped enough to understand any advanced ideas or commands that you may encounter. You can explore more on your own using man git-remote or git help remote.

References

• https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Basics-Working-with-Remotes