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World 4: Hello GitHub

Your first push

You will learn: how to send your commits to GitHub with git push.

The problem

Your diary has 3 commits. Your GitHub repo is empty. What carries the commits up there?

Watch

Your laptop~/diary
  1. ea2c020Add purple stylemain
  2. f6c78e5Add home page
  3. 2efd0f2Add README
Not linked to a GitHub branch yet
GitHubgithub.com/you/diary
Empty. No commits yet.

A push: Send your new commits to a remote, like GitHub. is a courier. It carries your new commits up to GitHub. git push -u origin main sends main to origin.

Watch

-u sets the upstream: The remote branch your branch follows, like origin/main. For a fork, also the usual name for the original repo.: main now follows origin/main. From now on, plain git push knows where to go.

Try it

Your turn. Tap a command and watch the courier.

Your laptop~/diary
  1. ea2c020Add purple stylemain
  2. f6c78e5Add home page
  3. 2efd0f2Add README
Not linked to a GitHub branch yet
GitHubgithub.com/you/diary
Empty. No commits yet.

Tap an action. Watch the courier.

Predict

Nothing is new. You run git push again. What does Git say?

Try it

You added an about page. Send it with the short command.

2efd0f2f6c78e5ea2c0208de16c3

You did it!

You can now push your commits to GitHub.

Go deeper (optional)

git config --global push.autoSetupRemote true makes plain git push set the upstream for new branches too. git push origin --delete old-branch deletes a branch on GitHub. Pushing a new branch makes GitHub print a pull request link.