Re: Syncing a git working tree with Dropbox?

From: Geoffrey Lee <geoffreyj.lee@gmail.com>
Date: Jan 14, 2010, 13:19 UTC
Message-ID: <83d7aaa41001140519g2f84199j38bd0e9a5c73953@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <be6fef0d1001132139p56944cdax22674ca773af0199@mail.gmail.com>

On Wed, Jan 13, 2010 at 9:39 PM, Tay Ray Chuan <rctay89@gmail.com> wrote:

Show 14 quoted lines

> On Thu, Jan 14, 2010 at 7:57 AM, chombee <chombee@lavabit.com> wrote:
>> My idea is that I keep my .git folder safely outside of my Dropbox
>> folder, but my git repository has a detached working tree that is
>> located in the Dropbox folder. On machine B it would be the same setup.
>> So the two machines each have their own clone of the git repo and these
>> are synchronised by git push and git pull with a 'central' remote repo.
>> But the two clones share the same working tree, or more accurately their
>> working trees are synced by Dropbox.
>>
>> The working tree is just files, I don't see how it's different from
>> Dropbox syncing any other files. Dropbox and git ought not to collide in
>> any way. So this should work fine shouldn't it?
>
> Your changes in git (like new commits) won't be synced.

You have to sync your .git directory. For example, using your setup, if you switch branches on Machine A, your working directory will change on Machine B, but Machine B will still think it's on the previous branch. This scenario would cause a lot of problems for Git.

There shouldn't be any problems with placing your entire repository (working tree and .git directory) inside Dropbox as long as you only use one computer at a time.

-Geoffrey Lee