Git - Can't Push - "! [remote rejected] master -> master (Working directory has unstaged changes)"

Question

I am trying to set up a "simple" git workflow for a Wordpress installation that has a local version, a staging version and a production version. All I want to do is make changes locally and push from local to staging and from local to production. At first I thought this would be a simple task. I have been able to initialize the repository, add the two remotes "staging" and "production", initialize git on the remotes and push changes from my local version to the staging and production servers normally using the commands:

git add .
git commit -m "some changes"
git push staging master
git push production master

However, at some point during my work something changed, and while I am still able to push to Staging, now I am unable to push to the Production server without getting the error:

! [remote rejected] master -> master (Working directory has unstaged changes)

When I do "git status" it says:

On branch master
nothing to commit, working tree clean

After reading the answers to several SIMILAR BUT DIFFERENT questions on Stack Overflow I have tried the following:

git pull staging master
git pull staging master --rebase
git pull production master
git pull production master --rebase

I also tried executing this command on the remote servers

git config --local receive.denyCurrentBranch updateInstead

I have already completely re-created the servers and repositories a few times just to re-install git entirely from scratch, but this problem keeps happening after a while and at this point Git is actually HURTING my workflow instead of helping it. If anyone has any insight into what my mistake is, it would be much appreciated!

Answer 1

I had similar problems, pushing to a non-bare remote repo where I wanted the working copy files to be checked out immediately.

My remote was configured with receive.denyCurrentBranch updateInstead, but it still refused to accept pushes at unpredictable times.

Git 2.4 added a push-to-checkout hook, which can override such push failures.

I wrote a short script based on the example in the githooks documentation.

#!/bin/sh
set -ex
git read-tree --reset -u HEAD "$1"

I installed this script in .git/hooks/push-to-checkout in my remote repo.

Note that this script overwrites the working copy in the remote — it does not attempt to merge any changes to those files.

That's because I want the working copy to simply reflect the files in the repo.

Answer 2

Making a git bare repo is the best practice to push to.
You could push to a non-bare one... but only if you are not modifying files on the destination side while you are pushing file from the source side. See push-to-deploy.

But the best practice remains to add a post-receive hook (as in my other answer) in order to checkout in an actual folder all the files you have received.