Help with repo management.

I'm new to git and repo management and I have an issue that I can't quite figure out. Here's my problem.

I have a server (SERVER) with a repo on it. It has all my code and documentation. I pulled that repo onto my workstation for a local copy so I could work at home or wherever with needing server access. My problem is I can /pull/ from the repo on SERVER, but I can't /push/ any local changes back to the server. I get an error message about master being checked out.

I know a little about bare repos, but my understanding is that the bare repo doesn't actually have the actual files in it, just the changes, which is not what I want. I would like to have the copy on SERVER to work from if I want, and also be able to pull/push changes from my local copy as well. That way I have 2 copies of the data handy (not to mention the disc backups.

I'm fairly sure this can be setup, but I just don't know enough to figure it out. Can someone point me in the right direction?

On 20 April 2012 00:35, Mark Haney <markh@abemblem.com> wrote:

First things first, don't think that just because a bare repository does not have a working copy that it doesn't have all the data. Having a local working copy and a bare repository on a server _is_ keeping two separate copies of your data handy, just one is not immediately accessible (you have to check it out first). This may be your understanding, but it was unclear so I thought I would clarify.

In terms of pushing to a remote, it is best practice to NOT push to a repository that has a checked out working copy. The main reason for this is that it becomes much easier to lose data, which is bad.

Instead, if you want to work on SERVER as well as some other machine, it is safer to checkout the bare repository to another repository on SERVER, pulling and pushing to the bare repository in the same fashion as you would from a remote machine.

Some more explanation can be found at http://gitready.com/advanced/2009/02/01/push-to-only-bare-repositories.html for example.

Regards,

Andrew Ardill

On 04/19/2012 07:49 PM, Andrew Ardill wrote:

Well, that's originally what I thought, that the bare repository carries all the data. But (and I'm not sure how this came about), the more I was reading on using git the more it read like the bare repository ONLY housed the changes made. For example, I have a technical document on how the structure of the database I'm designing. If I edit the document and then push it to the bare repo, the ONLY thing in the bare repo is the delta of that document, not the delta AND the original document. Does that make sense?

In essence, it sounded to me like the bare repo required a copy of the original data in order for it to be used, since it only housed the deltas of the original, not the originals themselves.

In retrospect, it sounds a bit silly now, I suppose since it would be impossible to for someone new to pull a copy of the data down from the bare repo and have it be useful. But, that's how I read the docs I had googled when first getting started with this project.

I hope that makes it a little easier to understand why I had the problem I was having. Thanks a lot for the informative reply, and the patience to do so.