How to determine the URL that a local Git repository was originally cloned from?

I pulled a project from GitHub a few days ago. I have since discovered that there are several forks on GitHub, and I neglected to note which one I took originally.

How can I determine which of those forks I pulled?

26 Answers

If you want only the remote URL, or if your are not connected to a network that can reach the remote repo:

git config --get remote.origin.url

If you require full output and you are on a network that can reach the remote repo where the origin resides :

git remote show origin

When using git clone (from GitHub, or any source repository for that matter) the default name for the source of the clone is "origin". Using git remote show will display the information about this remote name. The first few lines should show:

C:\Users\jaredpar\VsVim> git remote show origin
* remote origin Fetch URL: :jaredpar/VsVim.git Push URL: :jaredpar/VsVim.git HEAD branch: master Remote branches:

If you want to use the value in the script, you would use the first command listed in this answer.

Should you want this for scripting purposes, you can get only the URL with

git config --get remote.origin.url

You can try:

git remote -v

It will print all your remotes' fetch/push URLs.

To get the answer:

git ls-remote --get-url [REMOTE]

This is better than reading the configuration; refer to the man page for git-ls-remote:

--get-url

Expand the URL of the given remote repository taking into account any "url.<base>.insteadOf" config setting (See git-config(1)) and exit without talking to the remote.

As pointed out by @Jefromi, this option was added in v1.7.5 and not documented until v1.7.12.2 (2012-09).

With Git 2.7 (release January 5th, 2015), you have a more coherent solution using git remote:

git remote get-url origin

(nice pendant of git remote set-url origin <newurl>)

See commit 96f78d3 (16 Sep 2015) by Ben Boeckel (mathstuf).
^{(Merged by Junio C Hamano -- gitster -- in commit e437cbd, 05 Oct 2015)}:

remote: add get-url subcommand

Expanding insteadOf is a part of ls-remote --url and there is no way to expand pushInsteadOf as well.
Add a get-url subcommand to be able to query both as well as a way to get all configured URLs.

get-url:

Retrieves the URLs for a remote.
Configurations for insteadOf and pushInsteadOf are expanded here.
By default, only the first URL is listed.

With '--push', push URLs are queried rather than fetch URLs.

With '--all', all URLs for the remote will be listed.

Before git 2.7, you had:

 git config --get remote.[REMOTE].url git ls-remote --get-url [REMOTE] git remote show [REMOTE]

To summarize, there are at least four ways:

Trying it out using the official Linux repository:

Least information:

$ git config --get remote.origin.url

and

$ git ls-remote --get-url

More information:

$ git remote -v
origin (fetch)
origin (push)

Even more information:

$ git remote show origin
* remote origin Fetch URL: Push URL: HEAD branch: master Remote branch: master tracked Local branch configured for 'git pull': master merges with remote master Local ref configured for 'git push': master pushes to master (up to date)

I think you can find it under .git/config and remote["origin"] if you didn't manipulate that.

For me, this is the easier way (less typing):

$ git remote -v
origin (fetch)
origin (push)

actually, I've that into an alias called s that does:

git remote -v
git status

You can add to your profile with:alias s='git remote -v && git status'

Short answer:

$ git remote show -n origin

or, an alternative for pure quick scripts:

$ git config --get remote.origin.url

Some info:

$ git remote -v will print all remotes (not what you want). You want origin right?
$ git remote show origin much better, shows only origin but takes too long (tested on git version 1.8.1.msysgit.1).

I ended up with: $ git remote show -n origin, which seems to be fastest. With -n it will not fetch remote heads (AKA branches). You don't need that type of info, right?

You can apply | grep -i fetch to all three versions to show only the fetch URL.

If you require pure speed, then use:

$ git config --get remote.origin.url

Thanks to @Jefromi for pointing that out.

I can never remember all the parameters to Git commands, so I just put an alias in the ~/.gitconfig file that makes more sense to me, so I can remember it, and it results in less typing:

[alias]
url = ls-remote --get-url

After reloading the terminal, you can then just type:

> git url

Here are a few more of my frequently used ones:

[alias]
cd = checkout
ls = branch
lsr = branch --remote
lst = describe --tags

I also highly recommend git-extras which has a git info command which provides much more detailed information on the remote and local branches.

I prefer this one as it is easier to remember:

git config -l

It will list all useful information such as:

user.name=Your Name
user.email=
core.autocrlf=input
core.repositoryformatversion=0
core.filemode=true
core.bare=false
core.logallrefupdates=true
remote.origin.url=
remote.origin.fetch=+refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*
branch.master.remote=origin
branch.master.merge=refs/heads/master

The Git URL will be inside the Git configuration file. The value corresponds to the key url.

For Mac and Linux use the commands below:

 cd project_dir cat .git/config | grep url | awk '{print $3}'

For Windows open the below file in any text editor and find the value for key url.

project_dir/.git/config

Note: This will work even if you are offline or the remote git server has been taken down.

I basically use:

git remote get-url origin

It works for Git Bash command console or CMD command console in Windows. That said, it works with version 2.x of Git.

git config --list

This command will give all information related to your repository.

The upstream's remote may not be called "origin", so here's a variation:

remote=$(git config --get branch.master.remote)
url=$(git config --get remote.$remote.url)
basename=$(basename "$url" .git)
echo $basename

Or:

basename $(git config --get remote.$(git config --get branch.master.remote).url) .git

For more useful variables there's:

$ git config -l

A simple way is to open the .git/config file:

cat .git/config

To edit:

vim .git/config or

nano .git/config

To get the IP address/hostname of `origin`

For ssh:// repositories:

git ls-remote --get-url origin | cut -f 2 -d @ | cut -f 1 -d "/"

For git:// repositories:

git ls-remote --get-url origin | cut -f 2 -d @ | cut -f 1 -d ":"

To supplement the other answers: If the remote has for some reason been changed and so doesn't reflect the original origin, the very first entry in the reflog (i.e. the last entry displayed by the command git reflog) should indicate where the repo was originally cloned from.

e.g.

$ git reflog | tail -n 1
f34be46 HEAD@{0}: clone: from
$

(Bear in mind that the reflog may be purged, so this isn't guaranteed to work.)

With git remote show origin you have to be in the projects directory. But if you want to determine the URLs from anywhere else you could use:

cat <path2project>/.git/config | grep url

If you'll need this command often, you could define an alias in your .bashrc or .bash_profile with MacOS.

alias giturl='cat ./.git/config | grep url'

So you just need to call giturl in the Git root folder in order to simply obtain its URL.

If you extend this alias like this

alias giturl='cat .git/config | grep -i url | cut -d'=' -f 2'

you get only the plain URL without the preceding

"url="

url=

you get more possibilities in its usage:

Example

On Mac you could call open $(giturl) to open the URL in the standard browser.

Or chrome $(giturl) to open it with the Chrome browser on Linux.

You cloned your repo with SSH clone.

git config --get remote.origin.url
:company/product/production.git

But you want to get http url to open it in the browser or share it:

git config --get remote.origin.url | sed -e 's/:/\//g'| sed -e 's/ssh\/\/\///g'| sed -e 's/git@/https:\/\//g'

GitHub or GitLab doesn’t matter.

Print arbitrarily named remote fetch URLs:

git remote -v | grep fetch | awk '{print $2}'

If you do not know the name of the upstream remote for a branch, you can look that up first by inspecting the upstream branch name that the current branch was built upon. Use git rev-parse like this:

git rev-parse --symbolic-full-name --abbrev-ref @{upstream}

This shows that upstream branch that was the source for the current branch. This can be parsed to get the remote name like this:

git rev-parse --symbolic-full-name --abbrev-ref @{upstream} | cut -d / -f 1

Now take that and pipe it to git ls-remote and you'll get the URL of the upstream remote that is the source of the current branch:

git ls-remote --get-url \ $(git rev-parse --symbolic-full-name --abbrev-ref @{upstream} | cut -d / -f 1)

Now it should be noted, that this is not necessarily the same as the source remote repository that was cloned from. In many cases however it will be enough.

#!/bin/bash
git-remote-url() { local rmt=$1; shift || { printf "Usage: git-remote-url [REMOTE]\n" >&2; return 1; } local url if ! git config --get remote.${rmt}.url &>/dev/null; then printf "%s\n" "Error: not a valid remote name" && return 1 # Verify remote using 'git remote -v' command fi url=`git config --get remote.${rmt}.url` # Parse remote if local clone used SSH checkout [[ "$url" == git@* ]] \ && { url="" >&2; }; \ { url="${url%%.git}" >&2; }; printf "%s\n" "$url"
}

Usage:

# Either launch a new terminal and copy `git-remote-url` into the current shell process,
# or create a shell script and add it to the PATH to enable command invocation with bash.
# Create a local clone of your repo with SSH, or HTTPS
git clone :your-username/your-repository.git
cd your-repository
git-remote-url origin

Output:

To get only the remote URL:

git config --get remote.origin.url

In order to get more details about a particular remote, use the

git remote show [remote-name] command

To See Remote Url

git remote show origin

To See where you .git folder placed

git config --get remote.origin.url

easy just use this command where you .git folder placed

git config --get remote.origin.url

if you are connected to network

git remote show origin

it will show you the URL that a local Git repository was originally cloned from.

hope this help

alias git-repo="git config --get remote.origin.url | sed -e 's/:/\//g'| sed -e 's/ssh\/\/\///g'| sed -e 's/git@/https:\/\//g'"
alias git-pr="git config --get remote.origin.url | sed -e 's/:/\//g'| sed -e 's/ssh\/\/\///g'| sed -e 's/git@/https:\/\//g' | sed 's/....$//' | sed -ne 's/$/\/pulls &/p'"

add this expresion to .zshrc or .bashrcs on main directory

after you can use like