Can't change git remote origin

Question

Can someone explain why git remote origin cannot be changed from livepost.git to europeanexplorer.git? I tried following the directions, but documentation states that error: Could not remove config section 'remote.origin' means the file doesn't exist which clearly seems to not be the case here.

$ git remote -v
origin  https://github.com/harrisongill/livepost.git (fetch)
origin  https://github.com/harrisongill/livepost.git (push)
$ git remote rm origin
error: Could not remove config section 'remote.origin'
$ git remote set-url origin https://github.com/harrisongill/europeanexplorer.git
$ git remote -v
origin  https://github.com/harrisongill/livepost.git (fetch)
origin  https://github.com/harrisongill/livepost.git (push)
origin  https://github.com/harrisongill/europeanexplorer.git (push)
$ git remote rm origin
$ git remote -v
origin  https://github.com/harrisongill/livepost.git (fetch)
origin  https://github.com/harrisongill/livepost.git (push)

EDIT: Add git config

$git config --list
Harrisons-MacBook-Pro:European Explorer harrison$ git config --list
user.name=Harrison Gill
user.email=my email
remote.origin.url=https://github.com/harrisongill/livepost.git
core.repositoryformatversion=0
core.filemode=true
core.logallrefupdates=true
core.precomposeunicode=true

Answer 1

All command line commands write strings into files in your .git/ directory.
Remotes are configured conveniently inside .git/config file, and I think that's what Chris was referring to.

So, if you do vim .git/config you should see something like this:

[core]
  repositoryformatversion = 0
  filemode = true
  bare = false
  logallrefupdates = true
  ignorecase = true
  precomposeunicode = false
[remote "origin"]
  url = [email protected]:harrisongill/livepost.git
  fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*

and perhaps something else that's confusing to git in the [remote "origin"] section :P.

Why did it get messed up? I don't know. However just manually editing this file should set you straight :)

Get rid of the extra stuff and you should be good to go :)

Answer 2

Original answer Jan 2014

As commented in "Cannot remove remote origin", the error message error: Could not remove config section 'remote.origin' means there is no remote 'origin' in your Git config file.

At least not in your local config file.

I just tested adding a remote "origin" section in my global config file, and I got what you have:

C:\Users\VonC\prog\git\tests\21195717\t>git config --global --edit

C:\Users\VonC\prog\git\tests\21195717\t>git remote -v
origin  https://a.com/b (fetch)
origin  https://a.com/b (push)

C:\Users\VonC\prog\git\tests\21195717\t>git remote rm origin
error: Could not remove config section 'remote.origin'

Check your global config file:

git config --global --edit

---

Update February 2016

Git 2.8 will update that error message to "no such remote".

See commit a31eeae, commit cc8e538, commit 674468b, commit bc60f8a (16 Feb 2016) by Thomas Gummerer (tgummerer).
^{(Merged by Junio C Hamano -- gitster -- in commit ae2f255, 26 Feb 2016)}

remote: actually check if remote exits

When converting the git remote command to a builtin in 211c89 ("Make git-remote a builtin"), a few calls to check if a remote exists were converted from:

  if (!exists $remote->{$name}) {
      [...]

to:

  remote = remote_get(argv[1]);
  if (!remote)
      [...]

The new check is not quite correct, because remote_get() never returns NULL if a name is given.
This leaves us with the somewhat cryptic error message "error: Could not remove config section 'remote.test'", if we are trying to remove a remote that does not exist, or a similar error if we try to rename a remote.

Use the remote_is_configured() function to check whether the remote actually exists, and die with a more sensible error message ("No such remote: $remotename") instead if it doesn't.