rsync .git directory

Question

This question probably is based on my lack of understanding of the role of .gits and git repositories in general but:

Can I rsync a dir with content that I created with git init between machines ?

I have a repository on my laptop, and the only way to get it away from there is scp/rsync to a remote host, from which I can download it again. Could I rsync the complete directory structure between these hosts?

Answer 1

There are a few possibilities:

• You can just rsync the .git repository (or even whole repository together with working directory), provided that you don't have any activity in repository during rsyncing (same disclaimer as for using rsync:// protocol).

• You can clone or fetch using deprecated rsync protocol (where repository URL / location looks like this: "rsync://host.xz/path/to/repo.git/"). Note that this protocol is deprecated, because if there is any activity in repository, you can get corrupted clone (or fetch).

  Also, as I have heard, it didn't work correctly in the presence of packed refs since 2007, and nobody noticed till recently. It will (it did) disappear in Git 2.8.

• Or you can create git bundle, rsync it or scp it on other machine, and then clone or fetch from bundle.