git pull while not in a git directory

Question

Let s say I have a directory   X Y  which is a git repository  Is it possible to somehow call a command like git pull from inside  X  but targeting the  X Y directory   EDIT  I guess I was wondering specifically  is it possible to do this using the a git command  but without having to change directories   NOTE  I ve accepted VonC s answer as it s much more elegant than previous options  For people running Git older than 1 8 5  please see bstpierre s answer below

User · Answer

For anyone like me that was trying to do this via a drush (Drupal shell) command on a remote server, you will not be able to use the solution that requires you to CD into the working directory:

Instead you need to use the solution that breaks up the pull into a fetch & merge:

drush @remote exec git --git-dir=/REPO/PATH --work-tree=/REPO/WORKDIR-PATH fetch origin
drush @remote exec git --git-dir=/REPO/PATH --work-tree=/REPO/WORKDIR-PATH merge origin/branch

User · Answer

Using combination pushd  git pull and popd  we can achieve this functionality   pushd  lt path-to-git-repo gt   amp  amp  git pull  amp  amp  popd   For example   pushd  E  Fake Directory gitrepo   amp  amp  git pull  amp  amp  popd

User · Answer

Edit   There s either a bug with git pull  or you can t do what you re trying to do with that command  You can however  do it with fetch and merge   cd  X git --git-dir  X Y  git fetch git --git-dir  X Y  git --work-tree  X Y merge origin master   Original answer   Assuming you re running bash or similar  you can do  cd  X Y  git pull    The git man page specifies some variables  see  The git Repository   that seem like they should help  but I can t make them work right  with my repository in  tmp ggg2    GIT WORK TREE  tmp ggg2 GIT DIR  tmp ggg2  git git pull fatal   usr lib git-core git-pull cannot be used without a working tree    Running the command below while my cwd is  tmp updates that repo  but the updated file appears in  tmp instead of the working tree  tmp ggg2   GIT DIR  tmp ggg2  git git pull   See also this answer to a similar question  which demonstrates the --git-dir and --work-tree flags

User · Answer

You may wrap it in a bash script or git alias   cd  X Y  amp  amp  git pull  amp  amp  cd -

User · Answer

This might be a similar problem  but you can also simply chain you commands  eg  On one line  cd   Sites yourdir web git pull origin master   Or via SSH   ssh username atyourserver com -t  cd   Sites thedir web git pull origin master

User · Answer

As some of my servers are on an old Ubuntu LTS versions  I can t easily upgrade git to the latest version  which supports the -C option as described in some answers    This trick works well for me  especially because it does not have the side effect of some other answers that leave you in a different directory from where you started   pushd  X Y git pull popd   Or  doing it as a one-liner   pushd  X Y  git pull  popd   Both Linux and Windows have pushd and popd commands

User · Answer

Starting git 1 8 5  Q4 2013   you will be able to  use a Git command  but without having to change directories       Just like  make -C  lt directory gt     git -C  lt directory gt       tells Git to go there before doing anything else    See commit 44e1e4 by Nazri Ramliy      It takes more keypresses to invoke Git command in a different directory without leaving the current directory           cd   foo  amp  amp  git status    git --git-dir   foo  git --work-tree   foo status   GIT DIR   foo  git GIT WORK TREE   foo git status      cd        git grep foo    for d in d1 d2 d3  do  cd  d  amp  amp  git svn rebase   done         The methods shown above are acceptable for scripting but are too cumbersome for quick command line invocations       With this new option  the above can be done with fewer keystrokes          git -C   foo status   git -C       grep foo   for d in d1 d2 d3  do git -C  d svn rebase  done        Since Git 2 3 4  March 2015   and commit 6a536e2 by Karthik Nayak  KarthikNayak   git will treat  git -C   lt path gt    as a no-op when  lt path gt  is empty        git -C     unhelpfully dies with error  Cannot change to      whereas the shell treats cd     as a no-op    Taking the shell s behavior as a precedent  teach git to treat -C     as a no-op  as well      4 years later  Git 2 23  Q3 2019   documents that  git -C     works and doesn t change directory     It s been behaving so since 6a536e2  git  treat  git -C   lt path gt      as a no-op when  lt path gt  is empty  2015-03-06  Git v2 3 4      That means the documentation now  finally  includes      If   lt path gt   is present but empty  e g  -C     then the current working directory is left unchanged      You can see git -C used with Git 2 26  Q1 2020   as an example   See commit b441717  commit 9291e63  commit 5236fce  commit 10812c2  commit 62d58cd  commit b87b02c  commit 9b92070  commit 3595d10  commit f511bc0  commit f6041ab  commit f46c243  commit 99c049b  commit 3738439  commit 7717242  commit b8afb90  20 Dec 2019  by Denton Liu  Denton-L    Merged by Junio C Hamano -- gitster -- in commit 381e8e9  05 Feb 2020        t1507  inline full name        Signed-off-by  Denton Liu      Before  we were running test must fail full name  However  test must fail should only be used on git commands    Inline full name   so that we can use test must fail on the git command directly       When full name   was introduced in 28fb84382b   Introduce  lt branch gt   upstream  notation   2009-09-10  Git v1 7 0-rc0 -- merge   the git -C option wasn t available yet  since it was introduced in 44e1e4d67d   git  run in a directory given with -C option   2013-09-09  Git v1 8 5-rc0 -- merge listed in batch  5      As a result  the helper function removed the need to manually cd each time  However  since git -C is available now  we can just use that instead and inline full name

User · Answer

You can write a script like this   cd  X Y git pull   You can name it something like gitpull  If you d rather have it do arbitrary directories instead of  X Y   cd  1 git pull   Then you can call it with gitpull  X Z Lastly  you can try finding repositories   I have a   git folder which contains repositories  and you can use this to do a pull on all of them   g  find  X -name  git  for repo in   g     do     cd   repo      cd        git pull done

User · Answer

This post is a bit old so could be there was a bug andit was fixed  but I just did this    git --work-tree  X Y --git-dir  X Y  git pull origin branch   And it worked  Took me a minute to figure out that it wanted the dotfile and the parent directory  in a standard setup those are always parent child but not in ALL setups  so they need to be specified explicitly

[git] git pull while not in a git directory

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