git push - How can I find the location of origin/master in git, and how do I change it?

Question

I'm a Git newbie. I recently moved a Rails project from Subversion to Git. I followed the tutorial here: http://www.simplisticcomplexity.com/2008/03/05/cleanly-migrate-your-subversion-repository-to-a-git-repository/

I am also using unfuddle.com to store my code. I make changes on my Mac laptop on the train to/from work and then push them to unfuddle when I have a network connection using the following command:

git push unfuddle master

I use Capistrano for deployments and pull code from the unfuddle repository using the master branch.

Lately I've noticed the following message when I run "git status" on my laptop:

# On branch master
# Your branch is ahead of 'origin/master' by 11 commits.
#
nothing to commit (working directory clean)

And I'm confused as to why. I thought my laptop was the origin... but don't know if either the fact that I originally pulled from Subversion or push to Unfuddle is what's causing the message to show up. How can I:

1. Find out where Git thinks 'origin/master' is?
2. If it's somewhere else, how do I turn my laptop into the 'origin/master'?
3. Get this message to go away. It makes me think Git is unhappy about something.

My mac is running Git version 1.6.0.1.

---

When I run git remote show origin as suggested by dbr, I get the following:

~/Projects/GeekFor/geekfor 10:47 AM $ git remote show origin
fatal: '/Users/brian/Projects/GeekFor/gf/.git': unable to chdir or not a git archive
fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly

When I run git remote -v as suggested by Aristotle Pagaltzis, I get the following:

~/Projects/GeekFor/geekfor 10:33 AM $ git remote -v
origin  /Users/brian/Projects/GeekFor/gf/.git
unfuddle    [email protected]:spilth/geekfor.git

Now, interestingly, I'm working on my project in the geekfor directory but it says my origin is my local machine in the gf directory. I believe gf was the temporary directory I used when converting my project from Subversion to Git and probably where I pushed to unfuddle from. Then I believe I checked out a fresh copy from unfuddle to the geekfor directory.

So it looks like I should follow dbr's advice and do:

git remote rm origin
git remote add origin [email protected]:spilth/geekfor.git

Answer 1

I came to this question looking for an explanation about what the message "your branch is ahead by..." means, in the general scheme of git. There was no answer to that here, but since this question currently shows up at the top of Google when you search for the phrase "Your branch is ahead of 'origin/master'", and I have since figured out what the message really means, I thought I'd post the info here.

So, being a git newbie, I can see that the answer I needed was a distinctly newbie answer. Specifically, what the "your branch is ahead by..." phrase means is that there are files you've added and committed to your local repository, but have never pushed to the origin. The intent of this message is further obfuscated by the fact that "git diff", at least for me, showed no differences. It wasn't until I ran "git diff origin/master" that I was told that there were differences between my local repository, and the remote master.

So, to be clear:

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"your branch is ahead by..." => You need to push to the remote master. Run "git diff origin/master" to see what the differences are between your local repository and the remote master repository.

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Hope this helps other newbies.

(Also, I recognize that there are configuration subtleties that may partially invalidate this solution, such as the fact that the master may not actually be "remote", and that "origin" is a reconfigurable name used by convention, etc. But newbies do not care about that sort of thing. We want simple, straightforward answers. We can read about the subtleties later, once we've solved the pressing problem.)

Earl