Git receive.denyCurrentBranch updateInstead fails

Question

I'm brand new to git and have no experience with any version control system. I develop locally and am looking for a simpler way (than FTP) to deploy files to the (LAMP) web server. I am having a hard time configuring Git (version 2.5 for Windows) to automatically update its current working directory when I push changes. Here is what I've done, after creating a local repo, doing the first commit, and adding the remote location under alias origin:

1. [remote] ssh user@domain
2. [remote] cd testgit
3. [remote] git init
4. [remote] git config receive.denyCurrentBranch updateInstead
5. [remote] git status: nothing to commit
6. [remote] exit
7. [local >> master] git status: nothing added but untracked files present
8. [local >> master] git push origin master

Step 8 generates one notice and two errors:

• stdin: is not a tty
• fatal: bad config value for 'receive.denycurrentbranch' in config
• fatal: Could not read from remote repository

I've been looking around but I'm stuck. What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

First, you would need to add and commit before pushing: if you have untracked files, then won't be pushed until you do add and commit.

Second, "receive.denyCurrentBranch updateInstead" is only for git 2.3+ (February 2015): make sure you have the right version of git n the server side.

Should git be installed separately on the server? I have git 2.5 on my Windows machine. I did not install anything specifically on the server

Yes you need to have git on the server as well.