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This article shows you how to convert local folders into Git repositories and push them to a remote repository.

Git version control and GitHub will provide us with all the tools we need to get the job done. Without further ado, let's get into today's agenda.

Set the folder as a Git Repo and push it to the remote

The first step is to set up an empty remote repository. In this case, we decided to use GitHub.

If you're not sure how to set up your remote, follow these steps.

1. Go to your GitHub account and navigate to the Repositories tab.
2. Click New to create a new repository. Name your repository and click Create Repository.

Do not include the README.md file. Copy the link to the repository; we will need it in the next step.

Open Git Bash and cd into the directory where you want to create the Git repository and initialize the Git repository using the git init command.

Here is an example.

NOTE: If you are not using GitHub as your remote, use git init --barethe command.

Now that our directory has been converted to a Git working directory, we can stage all of our files for commit. Use the git add command to add all of our files and folders to the index.

Before we stage our files, let's take a quick look at our working directory.

$ git status

We can see that Git is not tracking the files and folders that exist. Let's add them to the index.

$ git add .

Let's check our indexes.

Our files are now being changed to commit. We can run the command below to commit the changes and enter a commit message.

$ git commit -m "Initial Commit"

Next, we link our local repository with the remote GitHub repository. Remember the link we copied; it comes into play here.

This is how you connect the two.

$ git remote add origin https://github.com/Wachira11ke/Git-Tutorials.git

This will allow us to push and fetch changes from the remote. We can git remote -vconfirm this by running the command.

Now we can push our changes to the remote repository. Since we are pushing for the first time, we will use the command with the -u flag git push.

This will instruct Git to push our changes to the remote and set up our branch to track the remote branch.

$ git push -u origin master

The output is as follows:

What does set up to track mean?

When we set up a branch to track a remote branch, we can automatically push and pull without specifying the remote branch. You can use git remote -vvto check your remote tracking branch.

We can convert a non-empty local directory into a Git repository and push the changes to the remote. If you do not plan to use GitHub as a remote server, be sure to use git init --barethe command.