Trying to set up remote repo and push to it, getting confused

Question

I have a local repo set up on my laptop's hard drive, at c:\\someFolder\\.git . I want to set up a remote repo on a Windows server at x:\\someOtherFolder as a backup. Here are the steps I have taken so far:

1. In x:\\someOtherFolder , opened a git bash session and entered git clone "c:\\someFolder" . Got the message Cloning into 'someFolder'...done.

2. In c:\\someFolder , opened a git bash session and entered git remote add origin "x:\\someOtherFolder" . Statement executed without response.

3. Made some changes in the local project files and committed them to the local repo with git commit -am .

4. From the c:\\someFolder git bash, entered git push origin master . Response is:

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remote: error: refusing to update checked out branch: refs/heads/master

remote: error: By default, updating the current branch in a non-bare repository
remote: error: is denied, because it will make the index and work tree inconsistent
remote: error: with what you pushed, and will require 'git reset --hard' to match
remote: error: the work tree to HEAD.

etc.

I feel like I probably set up the remote incorrectly. What should I do instead?

Answer 1

Remote server can be only a bare repository (repository without content).
In order to have such a repository you need to create it with the --bare flag

# create a (bare) remote repository
git init --bare

Now you should see the content of the .git folder as the file system of that repository and you can start using it.

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Why should a remote repository be a bare repository?

Remote repository does not have any working directory. It simply contains all the content pushed into it from all other local repositories.

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To the user who did a down vote and commented out that you don't need a bare repository: you don't need it but this is the convention.

Read all about it in here: https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-on-the-Server-Getting-Git-on-a-Server

In order to initially set up any Git server, you have to export an existing repository into a new bare repository – a repository that doesn't contain a working directory .

This is generally straightforward to do.
In order to clone your repository to create a new bare repository, you run the clone command with the --bare option.

Answer 2

No, you did everything right, you've just got into a special situation.

That is, during the push git updates the specified references in the remote repo. In your example this is master branch in someOtherFolder . It's Ok, but since master branch is being checked out currently, then git prevents the push by default, preserving possible changes in the remote directories.

You have three options:

1. Nevertheless, you still can push into someOtherFolder if you think it's intended. Perform git push --force and don't forget to reset the working tree of someOtherFolder with git reset --hard issued from within someOtherFolder . This, however, is useful only for a few special cases. Suppose, someOtherFolder is a "puppet repository" which should contain only changes made in someFolder repository. You might find useful to set receive.denyCurrentBranch = warn configuration setting in someOtherFolder .

2. push your changes into another branch in someOtherDirectory : git push origin master:another_master . Thus you will create branch another_master in someOtherFolder only and can do whatever you want with master in it then.

3. A more typical solution would be to fetch new changes made in someFolder into someOtherFolder : inside someOtherFolder perform git fetch and you will get new changes in the remote branch origin/master .