Remote repositories

Cloning a remote repository

Ref: git-clone(1).

To clone a remote repository:

$ git clone git://github.com/cramz/git-memo.git

This create a local git-memo repository with a copy of the remote and check-out the current branch.

All the remotes branches are copied in the local repository, and the local branch are ref:tracking the remote ones <remote_tracking>

If you add the --mirror option you create a bare repository and maps all remote refs in the local repository.

Adding a new remote

In my local git-memo repository:

git remote add myserver git://myserver.com/cramz/git-memo.git

add a new remote called myserver, this does not fetch or push, or checkout anything, but the next:

git fetch

Will fetch refs/remotes/myserver/master. This remote tracking branch is updated also by:

git remote update myserver

By default all the remote branches are tracked, but you can use -track <branch> (abbrev -t) to select only some branches.

Fetching from Remote

To fetch all remotes:

$ git remote update

Remote configuration

To get remotes configuration we can edit .git/config or

$ git config --get-regexp 'remote'
remote.etc.url /shared/home/marc/crypt/gits/etc_shared.git
remote.etc.fetch +refs/remotes/etc/*:refs/remotes/etc/*
remote.etc.tagopt --no-tags

Options are added with commands like:

$ git config --add remote.etc.tagopt --no-tags

creating a bare remote repository

  1. copy local bare repo

    $ git clone --bare ~/proj proj.git
$ scp proj.git myserver.com/var/git/proj.git
$ cd proj
$ git remote add origin ssh://myserver.com/var/git/proj.git

  2. push a branch to an empty repository

    We can also create it empty and push on the remote server

    • on the remote server:

      $ mkdir /var/git/proj.git && cd /var/git/proj.git
$ git --bare init

    • on the client:

      $ cd proj
$ git remote add origin ssh://myserver.com/var/git/proj.git
$ git push origin master

push and delete remote branches

To push a new branch:

$ git push origin newfeature

To delete the branch on the remote:

$ git push origin :newfeature

It means push an empty branch to newfeature