Remotes, push, pull and the rejected-push error

Connect your repository to GitHub and fix the error every student hits on day one.

12 min read · Lesson 4 of 6 · Pro

A remote is a nickname for a URL

Your repository lives on your laptop. A remote is a saved link to another copy of the same repository, usually on GitHub. The default nickname is origin.

Create an empty repository on GitHub first. Do not tick "Add a README" if you already have commits locally; it creates a commit on their side that yours does not know about, and that causes the first error below.

BASH

git remote add origin https://github.com/ravikumar/attendance-app.git
git remote -v
git push -u origin main

-u sets origin/main as the upstream for your local main. After that first push, plain git push and git pull know where to go.

The rest of this lesson is Pro

The free lessons of Git and GitHub for Students finish what they start — read those first if you have not. This one goes further, and it is part of the paid half.

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