How To Create and Use a Remote git Repository

git is a version-control system, that is very powerful, and pretty easy to use. There are many advanced tutorials on it's use, here are a simple bunch of commands that I commonly use.

on your remote server, create a space for the remote repository

Use this set of commands if you just have 1 user planned to access the repository:

mkdir /home/roq/lang/sql/myapp.git && cd /home/roq/lang/sql/myapp.git
git --bare init
exit

Use this set of commands if you plan to have multiple users access the repository (somegroup would be the name of the group that they all share):

mkdir /home/roq/lang/sql/myapp.git && cd /home/roq/lang/sql/myapp.git
git --bare init --shared=group
sudo chgrp -R somegroup .
exit

copy empty remote repository locally

Note that :2094 can be dropped if you use the standard ssh port

git clone ssh://roq@yourdomain.org:2094/home/roq/lang/sql/myapp.git

then copy your files into this newly created directory

add location of remote repository

Note that :2094 can be dropped if you use the standard ssh port

git remote add origin ssh://roq@yourdomain.org:2094/home/roq/lang/sql/myapp.git

add and commit files

git add .
git commit -m "My first repository"

push local repository onto your remote repository

git push origin master

to make changes to your files, first

git checkout master

...then make your changes

once you're done, push your changes back to the remote repository

git commit -a -m "Next release"

to collect changes made by others from the remote repository

git pull origin master

to remove a file from the git repository (actually, it makes git forget about the file) - note that this will actually delete the physical file if it's still there

git rm OLDFILE

for someone else to create a copy of your repository

git clone ssh://roq@yourdomain.org:2094/home/roq/lang/sql/myapp.git

to get the latest from the remote repository

git pull origin master

to exclude files or directories

edit the .git/info/exlude file, for example, here I wanted to exclude all subdirectories that start with 2009 and a few other files that I needed in that directory, but didn't want checked-in:

2009*
*.pl
*.exe
*.lnk

to overwrite all your local files with copies from your remote repository

git fetch --all
git reset --hard origin/master

to keep your "remote" repository on a USB key

Note that you'd still have to create the directory on your USB key and run git --bare init from within that directory. Here I have a remote repository on a TrueCrypt volume that I always mount as M: on Windows:

git remote add origin /m/git_repository/myapp.git

On Linux, I mount the same TrueCrypt volume as /media/truecrypt1:

git remote add origin /media/truecrypt1/git_repository/myapp.git

to migrate a git repository

On new server

rsync -a -v -e ssh user@old.server.com:path/to/repository.git .

On client (you can do this or just edit the config manually)

git remote rm origin
git remote add origin user@new.server.com:path/to/repository.git

A good git branching model

There is a lot of documentation on branching on the main git site, but I really like this overview;

Merging to master

git checkout release
git pull origin release
git checkout master
git pull origin master
git merge release
git tag -a -m "tagged after merge" 20180102
git push origin master
git push --tags origin master

Master merge with overwrite

if all else fails with a release to master merge, and you just want to $@#$@# overwrite it as per this note

git branch -m master old-master
git branch -m release master
git push -f origin master

How To Create and Use a Remote git Repository

More Questions?