What is “origin” in Git?

Question

When I run:

git push origin branchname

What exactly is the origin and why do I have to type it before the branch name?

Answer 1

"origin" is noting just what you nicknamed your remote repository when you ran a command like this:

$ git remote add origin [email protected]:USERNAME/REPOSITORY-NAME.git

Now your Git knows that "origin" points to that specific repository. You could have named it "github" or "repo" or whatever you wanted.