How to create a remote Git repository from a local one?

Question

I think you make a bare repository on the remote side, git init --bare, add the remote side as the push/pull tracker for your local repository (git remote add origin URL), and then locally you just say git push origin master. Now any other repository can pull from the remote repository.

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. By convention, bare repository directories end in .git, like so:

$ git clone --bare my_project my_project.git
Initialized empty Git repository in /opt/projects/my_project.git/

This command takes the Git repository by itself, without a working directory, and creates a directory specifically for it alone.

Now that you have a bare copy of your repository, all you need to do is put it on a server and set up your protocols. Let’s say you’ve set up a server called git.example.com that you have SSH access to, and you want to store all your Git repositories under the /opt/git directory. You can set up your new repository by copying your bare repository over:

$ scp -r my_project.git [email protected]:/opt/git

At this point, other users who have SSH access to the same server which has read-access to the /opt/git directory can clone your repository by running

$ git clone [email protected]:/opt/git/my_project.git

If a user SSHs into a server and has write access to the /opt/git/my_project.git directory, they will also automatically have push access. Git will automatically add group write permissions to a repository properly if you run the git init command with the --shared option.

$ ssh [email protected]
$ cd /opt/git/my_project.git
$ git init --bare --shared

It is very easy to take a Git repository, create a bare version, and place it on a server to which you and your collaborators have SSH access. Now you’re ready to collaborate on the same project.

A note for people who created the local copy on Windows and want to create a corresponding remote repository on a Unix-line system, where text files get LF endings on further clones by developers on Unix-like systems, but CRLF endings on Windows.

If you created your Windows repository before setting up line-ending translation then you have a problem. Git's default setting is no translation, so your working set uses CRLF but your repository (i.e. the data stored under .git) has saved the files as CRLF too.

When you push to the remote, the saved files are copied as-is, no line ending translation occurs. (Line ending translation occurs when files are commited to a repository, not when repositories are pushed). You end up with CRLF in your Unix-like repository, which is not what you want.

To get LF in the remote repository you have to make sure LF is in the local repository first, by re-normalizing your Windows repository. This will have no visible effect on your Windows working set, which still has CRLF endings, however when you push to remote, the remote will get LF correctly.

I'm not sure if there's an easy way to tell what line endings you have in your Windows repository - I guess you could test it by setting core.autocrlf=false and then cloning (If the repo has LF endings, the clone will have LF too).

There is an interesting difference between the two popular solutions above:

1. If you create the bare repository like this:

   cd     /outside_of_any_repo
   mkdir  my_remote.git
   cd     my_remote.git
   git init --bare
   

and then

cd  /your_path/original_repo
git remote add origin /outside_of_any_repo/my_remote.git
git push --set-upstream origin master

Then git sets up the configuration in 'original_repo' with this relationship:

original_repo origin --> /outside_of_any_repo/my_remote.git/

with the latter as the upstream remote. And the upstream remote doesn't have any other remotes in its configuration.

2. However, if you do it the other way around:

   (from in directory original_repo)
   cd ..
   git clone --bare original_repo  /outside_of_any_repo/my_remote.git
   

then 'my_remote.git' winds up with its configuration having 'origin' pointing back to 'original_repo' as a remote, with a remote.origin.url equating to local directory path, which might not be appropriate if it is going to be moved to a server.

While that "remote" reference is easy to get rid of later if it isn't appropriate, 'original_repo' still has to be set up to point to 'my_remote.git' as an up-stream remote (or to wherever it is going to be shared from). So technically, you can arrive at the same result with a few more steps with approach #2. But #1 seems a more direct approach to creating a "central bare shared repo" originating from a local one, appropriate for moving to a server, with fewer steps involved. I think it depends on the role you want the remote repo to play. (And yes, this is in conflict with the documentation here.)

Caveat: I learned the above (at this writing in early August 2019) by doing a test on my local system with a real repo, and then doing a file-by-file comparison between the results. But! I am still learning, so there could be a more correct way. But my tests have helped me conclude that #1 is my currently-preferred method.