Question

I cloned a read-only Git repo from GitHub onto my server. The next day, I forked that repo on GitHub. What are the steps to update the remotes on my repository and make sure everything on the server is up-to-date?

Is this the way to start? Is there anything else I need to to so that the clone will treat the new origin as if I had originally cloned from it?

git remote rename origin upstream
git remote add origin [e-mail]:user/fork.git

Answer 1

The repository as a whole doesn’t have such a setting – each individual local branch does; there is a per-branch setting for its "upstream" or "tracking" branch which acts as the default for pushing, merging, or the @{u} shortcut.

The preferred way to change it is via the -u option of git push or git branch:

• Just change upstream branch:

  git branch -u origin/master master

• Or, push to a remote branch and set it as the new upstream:

  git push -u origin master

It can also be done directly through repository configuration (which is how it used to be done before -u was implemented):

• git config branch.master.remote origin