Creating a git server from a git repo

Overview

A Git project commonly consists of three main sections in a Developer environment and a single section in a Git Server:

In order to “move” a git repo to a git server, a special directory has to be generated first. This is called a bare repository, a directory that only contains the git data but not the project source code files, just like the .git directory.

Then this bare repo should be moved to the server, so the server acts as a common git server.

The repo from which the server was generated needs to add the git server as a remote and every other developer that wants to work in that project can clone it from the server directly.

First Alternative

An alternative workflow that does not involve cloning the repo locally would be:

1. Log in to the remote server ssh user@gitserver.com

2. Create an empty bare repo:

    mkdir /srv/git/my_project.git
    cd /srv/git/my_project.git
    git --bare init
    CTRL-d
   

3. Back in local host, add the remote:

    git remote add origin user@gitserver.com:/srv/git/my_project.git
   

4. Push changes:

    git push origin master
   

Second Alternative

Create bare repository

In order to set up a Git server, you have to export an existing repository into a new bare repository (a repository that doesn’t contain a working directory). This can be done with git clone --bare parameter.

--bare Make a bare Git repository. That is, instead of creating _directory_ and placing the administrative files in _directory_/.git make the _directory_ itself the $GIT_DIR.

$ git clone --bare my_project my_project.git
Cloning into bare repository my_project.git...
done.

Copy repo to remote server

Put the bare repository in the server.

$ scp -r my_project.git user@gitserver.com:/srv/git
$ rm -fr my_project.git

Add server repo as a remote in local repo

After having the repo in the remote server, the git server remote should be added to the local repo so it is possible to pull and push changes to it.

$ cd my_project
# Set a new remote
(my_project)$ git remote add origin user@gitserver.com:/srv/git/my_project.git

Verify new remote

(my_project)$ git remote -v
origin  user@gitserver.com:/srv/git/my_project.git (fetch)
origin  user@gitserver.com:/srv/git/my_project.git (push)

Conclusions

This is a simple way of enabling other users to contribute to your projects and having a centralized repository where your main stuff goes.

Now every other user that wants to contribute should clone the server repo and keep that up to date.

A bash script based in this tutorial is available at https://github.com/marcanuy/centralize-git-repo.

References

• https://git-scm.com/docs/git-clone
• https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-on-the-Server-Getting-Git-on-a-Server
• https://git-scm.com/book/ch4-1.html
• Code Review