Re: Problems setting up bare repository (git 1.5.3.3)

From: Barry Fishman <barry_fishman@acm.org>
Date: Oct 2, 2007, 13:54 UTC
Message-ID: <m34ph9tye1.fsf@barry_fishman.acm.org>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0710021045430.28395@racer.site>

Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> writes:

> Well, if the OP had used "git push <bla> master" instead of 
> "... master:master", it would have worked.  I am unaware of any tutorial 
> that suggests the latter, only of tutorials that suggest the former.

I did recheck the tutorials, and did not find the code I was using. So there was nothing incorrect in the documentation.

As for "master working where "master:master" didn't, this only exposes a more complex set of rules. I was not hoping for a more complex set of rules to learn, as GIT tried to figure out what I meant. I was hoping for a simpler command that did what I told it to do, and I was given it by Junio Hamano.

What distracted me was that after the "git --bare init", there seemed to be a incompletely defined setup. This sent me down the wrong path.

Although there was a master branch to which HEAD pointed, there was no ref/heads/master file or even a "packed-refs". This also confuses the the "git branch" command, so that when I initial tried "git --bare branch" it seemed unaware of any master branch. I then tried:

$ git --bare branch refs/heads/master fatal: Not a valid object name: 'master'.

If there isn't an initial master branch, then shouldn't "git branch" be able to create one. And if there is one, shouldn't the automatic rules explained in git-rev-parse man page find it? The error messages from the branch command is what got me on the wrong logical path.

The man page for git-init says:

  This command creates an empty git repository - basically a .git directory
  with subdirectories for objects, refs/heads, refs/tags, and template
  files. An initial HEAD file that references the HEAD of the master branch
  is also created.

Which is true, but although there is a HEAD that references the master branch, there isn't really any master branch. It might say something like:

  This command creates an empty git repository - basically a .git directory
  with subdirectories for objects, refs/heads, refs/tags, and template
  files. An initial HEAD file references the refs/heads/master branch
  which is created with the first commit.

This would at least somewhat explain "git branch" results.

The man page for git-push seems clear to me now. I should have more closely read the last example. The first example might be changed to say:

git push origin master
    Find a ref that matches master in the source repository (most
    likely, it would find refs/heads/master), and update (or create) the
    same ref, refs/heads/master, in the origin repository with it.

-- 
Barry Fishman