Git - push to a remote-tracking branch in the remote repository

Question

When simply doing git push to a remote repository, its master branch gets updated. This is undesirable in the case of non-bare repositories, and the warning message displayed by recent Git versions makes that clear.

I'd like to be able to push to a remote repository, and have one of its remote tracking branches be updated. Later, when I log in to the remote machine and run commands, I can choose to merge that remote tracking branch into master .

How can I do that? Or is there a better way to push changes to a non-bare repository?

Answer 1

You can do:

git push master:some-remote-branch

for example:

git push master:alex/master

(Although it is still not recommended to push to non-bare repository.)

Answer 2

I guess you should just set up a separate bare repository, ie. one without a working copy. Then you could just log in to the remote machine and clone this remote repository, and fetch/pull whenever you need it.