pull/push from multiple remote locations

Question

The short: is there a way to have a git repo push to and pull from a list of remote repos (rather than a single "origin")?

The long: I often have a situation when I'm developing an app in multiple computers, with different connectivity – say a laptop while on transit, a computer "A" while I'm in a certain location, and another computer "B" while on another. Also, the laptop might have connectivity with only either "A" or "B", and sometimes both.

What I would like to is for git to always "pull" from and "push" to all the computers it can currently connect to, so it's easier to jump from one machine to the other and continue working seamlessly.

Answer 1

You can configure multiple remote repositories with the git remote command:

git remote add alt alt-machine:/path/to/repo

To fetch from all the configured remotes and update tracking branches, but not merge into HEAD, do:

git remote update

If it's not currently connected to one of the remotes, it will take time out or throw an error, and go on to the next. You'll have to manually merge from the fetched repositories, or cherry-pick, depending on how you want to organize collecting changes.

To fetch the master branch from alt and pull it into your current head, do:

git pull alt master

So in fact git pull is almost shorthand for git pull origin HEAD (actually it looks in the config file to determine this, but you get the idea).

For pushing updates, you have to do that to each repo manually.
A push was, I think, designed with the central-repository workflow in mind.

Answer 2

Doing this manually is no longer necessary, with modern versions of git! See Malvineous's solution, below.

Reproduced here:

git remote set-url origin --push --add <a remote>
git remote set-url origin --push --add <another remote>

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Original answer:

This something I’ve been using for quite a while without bad consequences and suggested by Linus Torvalds on the git mailing list.

araqnid’s solution is the proper one for bringing code into your repository… but when you, like me, have multiple equivalent authoritative upstreams (I keep some of my more critical projects cloned to both a private upstream, GitHub, and Codaset), it can be a pain to push changes to each one, every day.

Long story short, git remote add all of your remotes individually… and then git config -e and add a merged‐remote. Assuming you have this repository config:

[remote "GitHub"]
    url = [email protected]:elliottcable/Paws.o.git
    fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/GitHub/*
[branch "Master"]
    remote = GitHub
    merge = refs/heads/Master
[remote "Codaset"]
    url = [email protected]:elliottcable/paws-o.git
    fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/Codaset/*
[remote "Paws"]
    url = [email protected]:Paws/Paws.o.git
    fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/Paws/*

… to create a merged‐remote for "Paws" and "Codaset", I can add the following after all of those:

[remote "Origin"]
    url = [email protected]:Paws/Paws.o.git
    url = [email protected]:elliottcable/paws-o.git

Once I’ve done this, when I git push Origin Master, it will push to both Paws/Master and Codaset/Master sequentially, making life a little easier.

Answer 3

Since git 1.8 (October 2012) you are able to do this from the command line:

git remote set-url origin --push --add user1@repo1
git remote set-url origin --push --add user2@repo2
git remote -v

Then git push will push to user1@repo1, then push to user2@repo2.

Answer 4

I added these aliases to my ~/.bashrc:

alias pushall='for i in `git remote`; do git push $i; done;'
alias pullall='for i in `git remote`; do git pull $i; done;'

Answer 5

You can add remotes with:

git remote add a urla
git remote add b urlb

Then to update all the repos do:

git remote update

Answer 6

Here is my example with bash script inside .gitconfig alias section

[alias]
        pushall = "!f(){ for i in `git remote`; do git push $i; done; };f"

Answer 7

I added two separate pushurl to the remote "origin" in the .git congfig file. When I run git push origin "branchName" Then it will run through and push to each url. Not sure if there is an easier way to accomplish this but this works for myself to push to Github source code and to push to My.visualStudio source code at the same time.

[remote "origin"]
  url = "Main Repo URL"
  fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*
  pushurl = "repo1 URL"
  pushurl = "reop2 URl"

Answer 8

This answer is different from the prior answers because it avoids the needless and asymmetric use of the --push option in the set-url command of git remote. In this way, both URLs are symmetric in their configuration. For skeptics, the git config as shown by cat ./.git/config looks different with versus without this option.

1. Clone from the first URL:

git clone [email protected]:myuser/myrepo.git

2. Add the second URL:

git remote set-url --add origin [email protected]:myuser/myrepo.git

3. Confirm that both URLs are listed for push:

$ git remote -v
origin  [email protected]:myuser/myrepo.git (fetch)
origin  [email protected]:myuser/myrepo.git (push)
origin  [email protected]:myuser/myrepo.git (push)

$ git config --local --get-regexp ^remote\..+\.url$
remote.origin.url [email protected]:myuser/myrepo.git
remote.origin.url [email protected]:myuser/myrepo.git

4. Push to all URLs in sequence:

git push

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To delete an added URL:

git remote set-url --delete origin [email protected]:myuser/myrepo.git

Answer 9

I wanted to work in VSO/TFS, then push publicly to GitHub when ready. Initial repo created in private VSO. When it came time to add to GitHub I did:

git remote add mygithubrepo https://github.com/jhealy/kinect2.git
git push -f mygithubrepo master

Worked like a champ...

For a sanity check, issue "git remote -v" to list the repositories associated with a project.

C:\dev\kinect\vso-repo-k2work\FaceNSkinWPF>git remote -v
githubrepo      https://github.com/jhealy/kinect2.git (fetch)
githubrepo      https://github.com/jhealy/kinect2.git (push)
origin  https://devfish.visualstudio.com/DefaultCollection/_git/Kinect2Work (fetch)
origin  https://devfish.visualstudio.com/DefaultCollection/_git/Kinect2Work (push)

Simple way, worked for me... Hope this helps someone.

Answer 10

I took the liberty to expand the answer from nona-urbiz; just add this to your ~/.bashrc:

git-pullall () { for RMT in $(git remote); do git pull -v $RMT $1; done; }    
alias git-pullall=git-pullall

git-pushall () { for RMT in $(git remote); do git push -v $RMT $1; done; }
alias git-pushall=git-pushall

Usage:

git-pullall master

git-pushall master ## or
git-pushall

If you do not provide any branch argument for git-pullall then the pull from non-default remotes will fail; left this behavior as it is, since it's analogous to git.

Answer 11

You'll need a script to loop through them. Git doesn't a provide a "push all." You could theoretically do a push in multiple threads, but a native method is not available.

Fetch is even more complicated, and I'd recommend doing that linearly.

I think your best answer is to have once machine that everybody does a push / pull to, if that's at all possible.

Answer 12

For updating the remotes (i.e. the pull case), things have become easier.

The statement of Linus

Sadly, there's not even any way to fake this out with a git alias.

in the referenced entry at the Git mailing list in elliottcable's answer is no longer true.

git fetch learned the --all parameter somewhere in the past allowing to fetch all remotes in one go.

If not all are requested, one could use the --multiple switch in order to specify multiple remotes or a group.

Answer 13

add an alias to global gitconfig(/home/user/.gitconfig) with below command.

git config --global alias.pushall '!f(){ for var in $(git remote show); do echo "pushing to $var"; git push $var; done; }; f'

Once you commit code, we say

git push

to push to origin by default. After above alias, we can say

git pushall

and code will be updated to all remotes including origin remote.

Answer 14

Adding the all remote gets a bit tedious as you have to setup on each machine that you use.

Also, the bash and git aliases provided all assume that you have will push to all remotes. (Ex: I have a fork of sshag that I maintain on GitHub and GitLab. I have the upstream remote added, but I don't have permission to push to it.)

Here is a git alias that only pushes to remotes with a push URL that includes @.

psall    = "!f() { \
    for R in $(git remote -v | awk '/@.*push/ { print $1 }'); do \
    git push $R $1; \
    done \
    }; f"

Answer 15

Adding new remote

git remote add upstream https://github.com/example-org/example-repo.git

git remote -vv

Fetch form multiple locations

git fetch --all

Push to locations

git push -u upstream/dev