Configuring Git to Push to Multiple Remotes with One Command

It's often useful to have your project hosted on multiple remote repositories (e.g., GitHub for general development and Hugging Face Spaces for a specific deployment or sharing). While you can manage these as separate remotes and push to them individually, Git also allows you to configure a single remote to push to multiple URLs simultaneously.

This document outlines the steps taken to configure the origin remote to push to both a GitHub repository and a Hugging Face Space using a single git push origin <branch-name> command.

Goal

To be able to run git push origin main and have the main branch pushed to:

The primary GitHub repository.
A Hugging Face Spaces repository.

Initial State

Initially, you might have two separate remotes configured:

origin: Pointing to https://github.com/YOUR_USERNAME/YOUR_REPO.git
origin_hf: Pointing to https://huggingface.co/spaces/YOUR_HF_USERNAME/YOUR_SPACE_NAME

Configuration Steps

The strategy is to modify the origin remote to include multiple "push URLs". The origin remote will still fetch from its primary URL (GitHub), but pushes will go to all configured push URLs.

Set the Primary URL for origin (Fetch and Default Push): Ensure the main URL for origin (used for fetching and as the default first push target) is correctly set to your GitHub repository.
```
git remote set-url origin https://github.com/YOUR_USERNAME/YOUR_REPO.git
```
Clear Existing Specific Push URLs (Optional - Cleanup): If there were previous attempts to configure multiple push URLs that might have led to a confusing state, it can be helpful to clear them first.
```
git config --unset-all remote.origin.pushurl
```
This command removes any specific pushurl entries for the origin remote, causing it to revert to using its main url for pushes.
Add the First Push URL (GitHub): Explicitly add the GitHub repository URL as a push target. Since it's also the main url, this might seem redundant, but explicitly adding it as a pushurl ensures it's part of the push list when other pushurls are added.
```
git remote set-url --add --push origin https://github.com/YOUR_USERNAME/YOUR_REPO.git
```
Add the Second Push URL (Hugging Face): Add the Hugging Face Spaces repository URL as an additional push target.
```
git remote set-url --add --push origin https://huggingface.co/spaces/YOUR_HF_USERNAME/YOUR_SPACE_NAME
```
The --add flag is crucial here; it ensures this URL is added to the list of push URLs rather than replacing existing ones.

Verification

After these steps, you can verify the configuration.

Using git remote -v: This command should now show your origin remote configured for fetching from GitHub, and for pushing to both GitHub and Hugging Face. The output will look something like this:
```
origin  https://github.com/YOUR_USERNAME/YOUR_REPO.git (fetch)
origin  https://github.com/YOUR_USERNAME/YOUR_REPO.git (push)
origin  https://huggingface.co/spaces/YOUR_HF_USERNAME/YOUR_SPACE_NAME (push)
```
(And your origin_hf remote will still be listed if you haven't removed it).

Using git config --get-all (More Precise): To see the exact configuration values:

git config --get-all remote.origin.url
# Expected output: https://github.com/YOUR_USERNAME/YOUR_REPO.git

echo "---PUSH URLs---"
git config --get-all remote.origin.pushurl
# Expected output:
# https://github.com/YOUR_USERNAME/YOUR_REPO.git
# https://huggingface.co/spaces/YOUR_HF_USERNAME/YOUR_SPACE_NAME

This confirms that remote.origin.url (for fetching) is GitHub, and remote.origin.pushurl has entries for both GitHub and Hugging Face.

How to Use

With this configuration in place, to push your main branch (or any other branch) to both repositories, you simply run:

git push origin main

Git will attempt to push the specified branch to all URLs listed under remote.origin.pushurl as well as the primary remote.origin.url (if it's not already covered by a pushurl).

Optional: Removing the Redundant Remote

Since origin now handles pushing to Hugging Face, the separate origin_hf remote (if you had one for this purpose) might be redundant. You can remove it if you wish:

git remote remove origin_hf

This is optional and depends on your preference for managing remotes.

This setup streamlines the process of keeping multiple remote repositories synchronized with your local project.