git: simplest way to share a repository between two laptops on a local network?

Question

If my friend has a git repository on his laptop, and we are both connect to the same LAN, what's the absolute simplest way for me to clone that repository?

As far as I can tell, the options are:

• Getting SSH access to his machine
• Installing a web server and using git instaweb

But neither of these are particularly simple (or, at least, as simple as hg serve)… Is there anything better?

Answer 1

cd project
git daemon --reuseaddr --base-path=.git --export-all --verbose

To access: git pull git://HOST/

See answer https://stackoverflow.com/a/377293/794407

Answer 2

I don't remember what all the options mean, so it may take some playing, but I think git daemon does what you want. I have had it work in the past.

Answer 3

For cloning only, you want to use git daemon --export-all $PWD You can configure it to be read/write, but that is very insecure.

git-instaweb does not allow you to clone a repository.

Of course using github is a convenient way to share repositories without lots of configuration (though setting up an ssh server is usually not very difficult).

Answer 4

Not exactly point-and-click, but this might help:

http://scie.nti.st/2007/11/14/hosting-git-repositories-the-easy-and-secure-way

Also, if you have access to his drive via any type of share (NFS, Samba, etc) then you can clone via the share name.

Oh, and there's also git-daemon.