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:

Answer 1

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 git@github.com:myuser/myrepo.git

2. Add the second URL:

git remote set-url --add origin git@gitlab.com:myuser/myrepo.git

3. Confirm that both URLs are listed for push:

$ git remote -v
origin  git@github.com:myuser/myrepo.git (fetch)
origin  git@github.com:myuser/myrepo.git (push)
origin  git@gitlab.com:myuser/myrepo.git (push)

$ git config --local --get-regexp ^remote\..+\.url$
remote.origin.url git@github.com:myuser/myrepo.git
remote.origin.url git@gitlab.com:myuser/myrepo.git

4. Push to all URLs in sequence:

git push

---

To delete an added URL:

git remote set-url --delete origin git@gitlab.com:myuser/myrepo.git

Answer 2

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 3

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 4

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 5

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 6

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