Share code with push

TFS 2017 | TFS 2015 | TFS 2013

Visual Studio 2019 | Visual Studio 2017 | Visual Studio 2015

You can share your work on a local Git repo branch by uploading your changes to a remote repo that others can access. The Git push command uploads new commits from your local branch to the corresponding branch of a remote repo. Visual Studio uses the Git push command when you choose to sync your work with a remote repo.

For an overview of the Git workflow, see Azure Repos Git tutorial.

Push your code

After you've added one or more commits to a local branch, you can "push" the commits to a remote branch to share or back up your work. When you use the Git push command, Git checks whether your local branch is up to date with the remote branch. If not, Git will prevent you from pushing new commits until you've updated your local branch. To resolve this issue, you can pull to get the remote branch commits that aren't present in your local branch. If the pulled remote commits conflict with your local commits, try resolving those conflicts before pushing your changes.

For the Git push command to work, your local repo must be connected to a remote Git repo. If you cloned your local repo from a remote repo then they're already connected. But if you created your local repo without cloning, you'll need to connect it to a hosted Git repo. For more information, see Connect to an Azure Repos Git repo and Connect to a GitHub repo.

Tip

To support a pull request review of your work, avoid working directly in the main branch of your local repo. Instead, save your commits to a local feature branch or bugfix branch, and push that branch on completion of your work. For an overview of the Git workflow, see Azure Repos Git tutorial.

Visual Studio 2019

Visual Studio 2019 version 16.8 and later versions provides a Git version control experience while maintaining the Team Explorer Git user interface. To use Team Explorer, uncheck Tools > Options > Preview Features > New Git user experience from the menu bar. You can use Git features from either interface interchangeably. Below, we provide a side-by-side comparison of how to push your code.

Visual Studio Git

In the Git Changes window, select the up-arrow push button to push your commit.

Or, you can push your changes from the Git Repository window. To open the Git Repository window, select the outgoing / incoming link in the Git Changes window.

Or, you can push your changes from the Git menu on the menu bar.

Visual Studio Team Explorer

1. In Team Explorer, select Home and then choose Sync to open Synchronization.

You can also go to the Synchronization view from Changes by choosing Sync immediately after making a commit.

2. In the Synchronization view, choose Push to upload your commit to the remote repo. If this is your first push to the repo, you'll see the message: The current branch does not track a remote branch..., which lets you know that your commit was pushed to a new branch on the remote repo and that future commits pushed from the current branch will be uploaded to that remote branch.

Visual Studio 2017

1. In Team Explorer, select Home and then choose Sync to open Synchronization.

   

   You can also go to Synchronization from the Changes view by choosing Sync immediately after making a commit.

   

2. Select Push to share your commit with the remote repository.

   

   During your first push to the repository, you'll see the following message in place of the outgoing commits list: The current branch does not track a remote branch. Push your changes to a new branch on the origin remote and set the upstream branch. Select Push to push your changes to a new branch on the remote repository and set the upstream branch. The next time you push changes you'll see the list of commits.

   Note

   Go to Team Explorer > Settings > Repository Settings. Make sure that you've entered the correct User, Email, Remotes, and other settings.

Git Command Line

Although you should rarely need to push a local branch to a differently named remote branch, you can do so using the unabbreviated Git push command:

git push <remote repo> <local branch name>:<remote branch name>

To push new commits from your local branch to a same-named remote branch, run the following simplified push command. If the remote repo doesn't have a same-named branch, this command will create a new remote branch with the same name and commits as your local branch.

git push <remote repo> <local branch name>

When you clone a remote repo, Git assigns the alias origin as shorthand for the URL of the remote repo that you cloned. Run git remote -v to check the origin alias value. To add the origin alias manually, run git remote add origin <remote repo url>. With the origin alias, you can further simplify the push command:

git push origin <local branch name>

If your current local branch tracks a remote branch on origin, you can fully abbreviate the push command:

git push

However, the fully abbreviated push command will fail if your local branch doesn't track a remote branch. Run git remote show origin to check the tracked status of your branches. To push and set your current local branch to track the same-named remote branch on origin, run git push --set-upstream origin <local branch name> once. The --set-upstream flag will create a same-named remote branch if it doesn't exist.

It's common practice when working on a local feature or bugfix branch, to periodically update your branch with the latest changes from the main branch. Depending on how you do that, your local and remote commit histories might diverge such that the Git push command returns an error. If you're the only person pushing to the remote feature branch, and you're sure that your local branch contains all the work you need, you can use the Git push command with the --force flag to replace all commits on the remote feature branch with the commits from your local feature branch. For more information on the Git push command, including other force options, see the Git reference manual.

Once you've pushed your commits, you can create a pull request to let others know you'd like to have your changes reviewed. If approved, your changes will be merged into a target branch of the remote repo.

Next steps

Review code with pull requests Update code with fetch and pull

Related articles

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