How do I create a master branch in a bare Git repository?

Question

(All done in poshgit on Windows 8):

git init --bare test-repo.git
cd test-repo.git

(Folder is created with git-ish files and folders inside

Answer 1

A bare repository is pretty much something you only push to and fetch from. You cannot do much directly "in it": you cannot check stuff out, create references (branches, tags), run git status, etc.

If you want to create a new branch in a bare Git repository, you can push a branch from a clone to your bare repo:

# initialize your bare repo
$ git init --bare test-repo.git

# clone it and cd to the clone's root directory
$ git clone test-repo.git/ test-clone
Cloning into 'test-clone'...
warning: You appear to have cloned an empty repository.
done.
$ cd test-clone

# make an initial commit in the clone
$ touch README.md
$ git add . 
$ git commit -m "add README"
[master (root-commit) 65aab0e] add README
 1 file changed, 0 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
 create mode 100644 README.md

# push to origin (i.e. your bare repo)
$ git push origin master
Counting objects: 3, done.
Writing objects: 100% (3/3), 219 bytes | 0 bytes/s, done.
Total 3 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0)
To /Users/jubobs/test-repo.git/
 * [new branch]      master -> master

Answer 2

By default there will be no branches listed and pops up only after some file is placed. You don't have to worry much about it. Just run all your commands like creating folder structures, adding/deleting files, commiting files, pushing it to server or creating branches. It works seamlessly without any issue.

https://git-scm.com/docs

Answer 3

A branch is just a reference to a commit. Until you commit anything to the repository, you don't have any branches. You can see this in a non-bare repository as well.

$ mkdir repo
$ cd repo
$ git init
Initialized empty Git repository in /home/me/repo/.git/
$ git branch
$ touch foo
$ git add foo
$ git commit -m "new file"
1 file changed, 0 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
create mode 100644 foo
$ git branch
* master

Answer 4

You don't need to use a second repository - you can do commands like git checkout and git commit on a bare repository, if only you supply a dummy work directory using the --work-tree option.

Prepare a dummy directory:

$ rm -rf /tmp/empty_directory
$ mkdir  /tmp/empty_directory

Create a master branch without a parent (this way it works even when a repo is completely empty):

$ cd your-bare-repository.git

$ git checkout --work-tree=/tmp/empty_directory --orphan master
Switched to a new branch 'master'                  <--- abort if "master" already exists

Create at least one commit (it can be a message-only, without adding any file):

$ git commit -m "Initial commit" --allow-empty --work-tree=/tmp/empty_directory 

$ git branch
* master

Clean up a directory, it is still empty.

$ rmdir  /tmp/empty_directory

Tested on git 1.9.1. (For a specific OP's question, posh-git is just a Windows/PowerShell wrapper for normal git.)