Keep your github forks in sync with 2 separate URLs!

I’ve been using git and github for a while now, but only recently found out it’s possible to define 2 separate URLs for fetching and pushing. Often times, when I wanted to contribute to an open source project, I had to go through the ceremony of a) forking the repository b) cloning the fork to my machine and c) define an upstream remote to keep the fork in sync with the changes from the original repository.

Defining the upstream repository is my least favorite part of working with git/github – I always have to look up the steps how to do it. Instead of keeping the fork in sync, I just want to be able to fetch the changes from the original (upstream) repository, but push the changes into my own fork.

Turns out, git supports this scenario! Normally, when you type git remote –v, you get the following output:

git remote -v

origin git@github.com:username/MyForkedRepository.git (fetch) 
origin git@github.com:username/MyForkedRepository.git (push)

As you can see, the remote ‘origin’ defines 2 URLs, one with label fetch and one with push. Let’s set a different URL for the original, upstream repository (the one to fetch from):

git remote set-url origin git@github.com:NancyFx/Nancy.git

And another URL to my own fork (the one to push to):

git remote set-url --push origin git@github.com:hmemcpy/Nancy.git

You can also do this by directly modifying the .git/config file, and adding a separate pushurl value under [remote "origin"]:

...
[remote "origin"]
 fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*
 url = git@github.com:NancyFx/Nancy.git
 pushurl = git@github.com:hmemcpy/Nancy.git
...

And that’s it, I can now fetch and push normally, without having to worry about which remote I’m using!