pushing to a git repository does not work

Question

I am just starting out with GIT (i'm coming from cvs) and would like to set up something akin to cvs/svn with Git. I performed the following steps:

cd o:/repository
git init

cd <working directory>
git clone o:/repository

i now created a file called file.txt with some content doing a "git status" lists appropriate changes.

I then do

git add file.txt
git commit file.txt

and both seem to work fine.

When i do git push, i get the following error:

No refs in common and none specified; doing nothing.
Perhaps you should specify a branch such as 'master'.
fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly
error: failed to push some refs to 'o:/repository'

I tried doing a pull first, as well as specifying origin and master variations to the push command but none work.

Can someone please tell me what i am missing. I am running Windows 7 64 bit.

Ps. I also tried

git push origin master

and i get the following:

Counting objects: 3, done.
Writing objects: 100% (3/3), 251 bytes, done.
Total 3 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0)
Unpacking objects: 100% (3/3), done.
remote: error: refusing to update checked out branch: refs/heads/master
remote: error: By default, updating the current branch in a non-bare repository
remote: error: is denied, because it will make the index and work tree inconsistent
remote: error: with what you pushed, and will require 'git reset --hard' to match
remote: error: the work tree to HEAD.
remote: error:
remote: error: You can set 'receive.denyCurrentBranch' configuration variable to
remote: error: 'ignore' or 'warn' in the remote repository to allow pushing into
remote: error: its current branch; however, this is not recommended unless you
remote: error: arranged to update its work tree to match what you pushed in some
remote: error: other way.
remote: error:
remote: error: To squelch this message and still keep the default behaviour, set
remote: error: 'receive.denyCurrentBranch' configuration variable to 'refuse'.
To O:/repository
 ! [remote rejected] master -> master (branch is currently checked out)
error: failed to push some refs to 'O:/repository'

Answer 1

This happened to us a few weeks ago. It means that you have a working directory checked out in your origin repository and you cannot push to overwrite.

at the origin you need to bare the repository. I don't know of a way to do it with one command. What I did (at the origin repository)

> mv repository repository.old
> git clone --bare repository.old repository

I see that the origin in your case is the o:/repository. The origin, should not be a checked out working copy, so you can init a bare repository or copy as per above. To get the scenario you described to pass:

cd o:/repository
git init  --bare

cd <working directory>
git clone o:/repository

git push origin master

this should work just fine for you:

good reading: http://www.gitready.com/advanced/2009/02/01/push-to-only-bare-repositories.html

Answer 2

For the first push you'll need something like

git push origin master

See also the push.default option option.

In any case, if you're later going to run into a problem of pushing to a non-bare repository, so you'll need to read about that too.

Answer 3

If you still want to push to a checked out branch of a remote non-bare repo, it is now possible (Git 2.3.0, February 2015), provided there is no modified files in the target working tree.

In that remote repo, do:

git config receive.denyCurrentBranch=updateInstead

It is more secure than config receive.denyCurrentBranch=ignore: it will allow the push only if you are not overriding modification in progress.

See commit 1404bcb by Johannes Schindelin (dscho):

receive-pack: add another option for receive.denyCurrentBranch

When synchronizing between working directories, it can be handy to update the current branch via 'push' rather than 'pull', e.g. when pushing a fix from inside a VM, or when pushing a fix made on a user's machine (where the developer is not at liberty to install an ssh daemon let alone know the user's password).

The common workaround – pushing into a temporary branch and then merging on the other machine – is no longer necessary with this patch.

The new option is:

updateInstead

Update the working tree accordingly, but refuse to do so if there are any uncommitted changes.

Answer 4

As the error message states, the branch you're trying to push to (master) is checked out in the origin repository. You could solve this by going to o:/repository and checking out a different branch.