The "remote" repository that is destination of a push operation. This parameter can be either a URL (see the section GIT URLS below) or the name of a remote (see the section REMOTES below).

Specify what destination ref to update with what source object. The format of a <refspec> parameter is an optional plus +, followed by the source object <src>, followed by a colon :, followed by the destination ref <dst>.

The <src> is often the name of the branch you would want to push, but it can be any arbitrary "SHA-1 expression", such as master~4 or HEAD (see gitrevisions[7]).

The <dst> tells which ref on the remote side is updated with this push. Arbitrary expressions cannot be used here, an actual ref must be named. If git push [<repository>] without any <refspec> argument is set to update some ref at the destination with <src> with remote.<repository>.push configuration variable, :<dst> part can be omitted—​such a push will update a ref that <src> normally updates without any <refspec> on the command line. Otherwise, missing :<dst> means to update the same ref as the <src>.

If <dst> doesn’t start with refs/ (e.g. refs/heads/master) we will try to infer where in refs/* on the destination <repository> it belongs based on the type of <src> being pushed and whether <dst> is ambiguous.

The object referenced by <src> is used to update the <dst> reference on the remote side. Whether this is allowed depends on where in refs/* the <dst> reference lives as described in detail below, in those sections "update" means any modifications except deletes, which as noted after the next few sections are treated differently.

The refs/heads/* namespace will only accept commit objects, and updates only if they can be fast-forwarded.

The refs/tags/* namespace will accept any kind of object (as commits, trees and blobs can be tagged), and any updates to them will be rejected.

It’s possible to push any type of object to any namespace outside of refs/{tags,heads}/*. In the case of tags and commits, these will be treated as if they were the commits inside refs/heads/* for the purposes of whether the update is allowed.

I.e. a fast-forward of commits and tags outside refs/{tags,heads}/* is allowed, even in cases where what’s being fast-forwarded is not a commit, but a tag object which happens to point to a new commit which is a fast-forward of the commit the last tag (or commit) it’s replacing. Replacing a tag with an entirely different tag is also allowed, if it points to the same commit, as well as pushing a peeled tag, i.e. pushing the commit that existing tag object points to, or a new tag object which an existing commit points to.

Tree and blob objects outside of refs/{tags,heads}/* will be treated the same way as if they were inside refs/tags/*, any update of them will be rejected.

All of the rules described above about what’s not allowed as an update can be overridden by adding an the optional leading + to a refspec (or using --force command line option). The only exception to this is that no amount of forcing will make the refs/heads/* namespace accept a non-commit object. Hooks and configuration can also override or amend these rules, see e.g. receive.denyNonFastForwards in git-config[1] and pre-receive and update in githooks[5].

Pushing an empty <src> allows you to delete the <dst> ref from the remote repository. Deletions are always accepted without a leading + in the refspec (or --force), except when forbidden by configuration or hooks. See receive.denyDeletes in git-config[1] and pre-receive and update in githooks[5].

The special refspec : (or +: to allow non-fast-forward updates) directs Git to push "matching" branches: for every branch that exists on the local side, the remote side is updated if a branch of the same name already exists on the remote side.

tag <tag> means the same as refs/tags/<tag>:refs/tags/<tag>.

Push all branches (i.e. refs under refs/heads/); cannot be used with other <refspec>.

Remove remote branches that don’t have a local counterpart. For example a remote branch tmp will be removed if a local branch with the same name doesn’t exist any more. This also respects refspecs, e.g. git push --prune remote refs/heads/*:refs/tmp/* would make sure that remote refs/tmp/foo will be removed if refs/heads/foo doesn’t exist.

Instead of naming each ref to push, specifies that all refs under refs/ (which includes but is not limited to refs/heads/, refs/remotes/, and refs/tags/) be mirrored to the remote repository. Newly created local refs will be pushed to the remote end, locally updated refs will be force updated on the remote end, and deleted refs will be removed from the remote end. This is the default if the configuration option remote.<remote>.mirror is set.

Do everything except actually send the updates.

Produce machine-readable output. The output status line for each ref will be tab-separated and sent to stdout instead of stderr. The full symbolic names of the refs will be given.

All listed refs are deleted from the remote repository. This is the same as prefixing all refs with a colon.

All refs under refs/tags are pushed, in addition to refspecs explicitly listed on the command line.

Push all the refs that would be pushed without this option, and also push annotated tags in refs/tags that are missing from the remote but are pointing at commit-ish that are reachable from the refs being pushed. This can also be specified with configuration variable push.followTags. For more information, see push.followTags in git-config[1].

GPG-sign the push request to update refs on the receiving side, to allow it to be checked by the hooks and/or be logged. If false or --no-signed, no signing will be attempted. If true or --signed, the push will fail if the server does not support signed pushes. If set to if-asked, sign if and only if the server supports signed pushes. The push will also fail if the actual call to gpg --sign fails. See git-receive-pack[1] for the details on the receiving end.

Use an atomic transaction on the remote side if available. Either all refs are updated, or on error, no refs are updated. If the server does not support atomic pushes the push will fail.

Transmit the given string to the server, which passes them to the pre-receive as well as the post-receive hook. The given string must not contain a NUL or LF character. When multiple --push-option=<option> are given, they are all sent to the other side in the order listed on the command line. When no --push-option=<option> is given from the command line, the values of configuration variable push.pushOption are used instead.

Path to the git-receive-pack program on the remote end. Sometimes useful when pushing to a remote repository over ssh, and you do not have the program in a directory on the default $PATH.

Usually, "git push" refuses to update a remote ref that is not an ancestor of the local ref used to overwrite it.

This option overrides this restriction if the current value of the remote ref is the expected value. "git push" fails otherwise.

Imagine that you have to rebase what you have already published. You will have to bypass the "must fast-forward" rule in order to replace the history you originally published with the rebased history. If somebody else built on top of your original history while you are rebasing, the tip of the branch at the remote may advance with her commit, and blindly pushing with --force will lose her work.

This option allows you to say that you expect the history you are updating is what you rebased and want to replace. If the remote ref still points at the commit you specified, you can be sure that no other people did anything to the ref. It is like taking a "lease" on the ref without explicitly locking it, and the remote ref is updated only if the "lease" is still valid.

--force-with-lease alone, without specifying the details, will protect all remote refs that are going to be updated by requiring their current value to be the same as the remote-tracking branch we have for them.

--force-with-lease=<refname>, without specifying the expected value, will protect the named ref (alone), if it is going to be updated, by requiring its current value to be the same as the remote-tracking branch we have for it.

--force-with-lease=<refname>:<expect> will protect the named ref (alone), if it is going to be updated, by requiring its current value to be the same as the specified value <expect> (which is allowed to be different from the remote-tracking branch we have for the refname, or we do not even have to have such a remote-tracking branch when this form is used). If <expect> is the empty string, then the named ref must not already exist.

Note that all forms other than --force-with-lease=<refname>:<expect> that specifies the expected current value of the ref explicitly are still experimental and their semantics may change as we gain experience with this feature.

"--no-force-with-lease" will cancel all the previous --force-with-lease on the command line.

A general note on safety: supplying this option without an expected value, i.e. as --force-with-lease or --force-with-lease=<refname> interacts very badly with anything that implicitly runs git fetch on the remote to be pushed to in the background, e.g. git fetch origin on your repository in a cronjob.

The protection it offers over --force is ensuring that subsequent changes your work wasn’t based on aren’t clobbered, but this is trivially defeated if some background process is updating refs in the background. We don’t have anything except the remote tracking info to go by as a heuristic for refs you’re expected to have seen & are willing to clobber.

If your editor or some other system is running git fetch in the background for you a way to mitigate this is to simply set up another remote:

git remote add origin-push $(git config remote.origin.url)
git fetch origin-push

Now when the background process runs git fetch origin the references on origin-push won’t be updated, and thus commands like:

git push --force-with-lease origin-push

Will fail unless you manually run git fetch origin-push. This method is of course entirely defeated by something that runs git fetch --all, in that case you’d need to either disable it or do something more tedious like:

git fetch              # update 'master' from remote
git tag base master    # mark our base point
git rebase -i master   # rewrite some commits
git push --force-with-lease=master:base master:master

I.e. create a base tag for versions of the upstream code that you’ve seen and are willing to overwrite, then rewrite history, and finally force push changes to master if the remote version is still at base, regardless of what your local remotes/origin/master has been updated to in the background.

Usually, the command refuses to update a remote ref that is not an ancestor of the local ref used to overwrite it. Also, when --force-with-lease option is used, the command refuses to update a remote ref whose current value does not match what is expected.

This flag disables these checks, and can cause the remote repository to lose commits; use it with care.

Note that --force applies to all the refs that are pushed, hence using it with push.default set to matching or with multiple push destinations configured with remote.*.push may overwrite refs other than the current branch (including local refs that are strictly behind their remote counterpart). To force a push to only one branch, use a + in front of the refspec to push (e.g git push origin +master to force a push to the master branch). See the <refspec>... section above for details.

This option is equivalent to the <repository> argument. If both are specified, the command-line argument takes precedence.

For every branch that is up to date or successfully pushed, add upstream (tracking) reference, used by argument-less git-pull[1] and other commands. For more information, see branch.<name>.merge in git-config[1].

These options are passed to git-send-pack[1]. A thin transfer significantly reduces the amount of sent data when the sender and receiver share many of the same objects in common. The default is --thin.

Suppress all output, including the listing of updated refs, unless an error occurs. Progress is not reported to the standard error stream.

Run verbosely.

Progress status is reported on the standard error stream by default when it is attached to a terminal, unless -q is specified. This flag forces progress status even if the standard error stream is not directed to a terminal.

May be used to make sure all submodule commits used by the revisions to be pushed are available on a remote-tracking branch. If check is used Git will verify that all submodule commits that changed in the revisions to be pushed are available on at least one remote of the submodule. If any commits are missing the push will be aborted and exit with non-zero status. If on-demand is used all submodules that changed in the revisions to be pushed will be pushed. If on-demand was not able to push all necessary revisions it will also be aborted and exit with non-zero status. If only is used all submodules will be recursively pushed while the superproject is left unpushed. A value of no or using --no-recurse-submodules can be used to override the push.recurseSubmodules configuration variable when no submodule recursion is required.

Toggle the pre-push hook (see githooks[5]). The default is --verify, giving the hook a chance to prevent the push. With --no-verify, the hook is bypassed completely.

Use IPv4 addresses only, ignoring IPv6 addresses.

Use IPv6 addresses only, ignoring IPv4 addresses.

A single character indicating the status of the ref:

For a successfully pushed ref, the summary shows the old and new values of the ref in a form suitable for using as an argument to git log (this is <old>..<new> in most cases, and <old>...<new> for forced non-fast-forward updates).

For a failed update, more details are given:

The name of the local ref being pushed, minus its refs/<type>/ prefix. In the case of deletion, the name of the local ref is omitted.

The name of the remote ref being updated, minus its refs/<type>/ prefix.

A human-readable explanation. In the case of successfully pushed refs, no explanation is needed. For a failed ref, the reason for failure is described.

Works like git push <remote>, where <remote> is the current branch’s remote (or origin, if no remote is configured for the current branch).

Without additional configuration, pushes the current branch to the configured upstream (remote.origin.merge configuration variable) if it has the same name as the current branch, and errors out without pushing otherwise.

The default behavior of this command when no <refspec> is given can be configured by setting the push option of the remote, or the push.default configuration variable.

For example, to default to pushing only the current branch to origin use git config remote.origin.push HEAD. Any valid <refspec> (like the ones in the examples below) can be configured as the default for git push origin.

Push "matching" branches to origin. See <refspec> in the OPTIONS section above for a description of "matching" branches.

Find a ref that matches master in the source repository (most likely, it would find refs/heads/master), and update the same ref (e.g. refs/heads/master) in origin repository with it. If master did not exist remotely, it would be created.

A handy way to push the current branch to the same name on the remote.

Use the source ref that matches master (e.g. refs/heads/master) to update the ref that matches satellite/master (most probably refs/remotes/satellite/master) in the mothership repository; do the same for dev and satellite/dev.

See the section describing <refspec>... above for a discussion of the matching semantics.

This is to emulate git fetch run on the mothership using git push that is run in the opposite direction in order to integrate the work done on satellite, and is often necessary when you can only make connection in one way (i.e. satellite can ssh into mothership but mothership cannot initiate connection to satellite because the latter is behind a firewall or does not run sshd).

After running this git push on the satellite machine, you would ssh into the mothership and run git merge there to complete the emulation of git pull that were run on mothership to pull changes made on satellite.

Push the current branch to the remote ref matching master in the origin repository. This form is convenient to push the current branch without thinking about its local name.

Create the branch experimental in the origin repository by copying the current master branch. This form is only needed to create a new branch or tag in the remote repository when the local name and the remote name are different; otherwise, the ref name on its own will work.

Find a ref that matches experimental in the origin repository (e.g. refs/heads/experimental), and delete it.

Update the origin repository’s master branch with the dev branch, allowing non-fast-forward updates. This can leave unreferenced commits dangling in the origin repository. Consider the following situation, where a fast-forward is not possible:

            o---o---o---A---B  origin/master
                     \
                      X---Y---Z  dev

The above command would change the origin repository to

                      A---B  (unnamed branch)
                     /
            o---o---o---X---Y---Z  master

Commits A and B would no longer belong to a branch with a symbolic name, and so would be unreachable. As such, these commits would be removed by a git gc command on the origin repository.