What is the difference between 'origin' and 'remote' in git commands? [duplicate]

Question

In git lingo, are origin and remote the same thing? Or does origin refer to the local directory?

In the case of git push -u origin master: Which of the following interpretation is correct?

1. "push everything upstream to the remote repo called 'origin' and its branch 'master'"
2. "push everything from the local originating repo called 'origin' to the upstream 'master' branch"

Appreciate any clarification!

The answers to my question clarified two issues for me:

1. origin refers to the remote repo, rather than the local cloned copy of the remote repo. This is not clear when one reads that originis an alias of remote and is created at the time of git clone
2. origin refers to the remote repo in git push -u origin master because local copies of the repo are implied and "rarely referenced".

Answer 1

In git lingo origin is just the default name for a remote from which a repo was originally cloned. It might equally have been called source or remote1 or just remote.

Remember that git is a peer-to-peer, distributed system, not one with any built-in notion of client/server, master/slave, parent/child relationships (though these might be imposed upon it by a user in a particular scenario).

All remotes are equal. origin is simply (and literally) the first among those equals (for a cloned repo). :)

And as Jan points out in the comments, the name associated with each remote is intended for your convenience. If you find that origin does not really work for you then you can change it.

As for your interpretations of the push statement, your first is the closest to being correct but the push command as written will push the local master branch to the master branch on the remote identified by the (locally configured) name origin.

If there is no master branch in the remote then one will be created.

Full details of the push command and the flags, options etc are of course in the docs.

You rarely (if ever) refer to the 'local' repo explicitly since your operations are performed in the context of a repo.

Answer 2

No, they don't mean the same thing.

remote, in git-speak, refers to any remote repository, such as your GitHub or another git server.

origin is the, by convention, default remote name in git. When you do a git clone <url>, <url> is automatically added to your local repo under the name origin. You can, of course, add other remotes under different names using git remote add.

When you do git push -u origin master, what it means is "push everything from my local master to the remote named origin". The structure of this command is, of course, more general - the more general form is git push -u <remote> <branch>, which will push the branch named branch to the designated remote, creating it at the far end if the remote doesn't already have it (that's what the -u flag does).

As a further addendum, git push, by default, will push the current branch to origin, corresponding to git push origin <current-branch>.