How to convert a normal Git repository to a bare one

Question

How can I convert a  normal  Git repository to a bare one   The main difference seems to be    in the normal Git repository  you have a  git folder inside the repository containing all relevant data and all other files making up your working copy in a bare Git repository  there is no working copy and the folder  let s call it repo git  contains the actual repository data

User · Answer

Unless you specifically want or need to twiddle bits on the filesystem, it really is dead simple to create a bare version of a non-bare repository (mentioned in several other posts here). It’s part of git’s core functionality:

git clone --bare existing_repo_path bare_repo_path

User · Answer

In case you have a repository with few local checkedout branches  refs heads   and few remote branch branches remotes origin   AND if you want to convert this into a BARE repository with all branches in  refs heads    you can do the following to save the history     create a bare repository cd into the local repository which has local checkedout branches and remote branches git push  path to bare repo  refs remotes origin  refs heads

User · Answer

Here is the definition of a bare repository from gitglossary      A bare repository is normally an appropriately named directory with a  git suffix that does not have a locally checked-out copy of any of the files under revision control  That is  all of the Git administrative and control files that would normally be present in the hidden  git sub-directory are directly present in the repository git directory instead  and no other files are present and checked out  Usually publishers of public repositories make bare repositories available    I arrived here because I was playing around with a  local repository  and wanted to be able to do whatever I wanted as if it were a remote repository   I was just playing around  trying to learn about git   I ll assume that this is the situation for whoever wants to read this answer   I would love for an expert opinion or some specific counter-examples  however it seems that  after rummaging through some git source code that I found  simply going to the file  git config and setting the core attribute bare to true  git will let you do whatever you want to do to the repository remotely   I e  the following lines should exist in  git config    core              bare   true        This is roughly what the command git config --bool core bare true will do  which is probably recommended to deal with more complicated situations   My justification for this claim is that  in the git source code  there seems to be two different ways of testing if a repo is bare or not   One is by checking a global variable is bare repository cfg   This is set during some setup phase of execution  and reflects the value found in the  git config file   The other is a function is bare repository     Here is the definition of this function   int is bare repository void           if core bare is not  false   let s see if there is a work tree        return is bare repository cfg  amp  amp   get git work tree         I ve not the time nor expertise to say this with absolute confidence  but as far as I could tell if you have the bare attribute set to true in  git config  this should always return 1   The rest of the function probably is for the following situation    core bare is undefined  i e  neither true nor false  There is no worktree  i e  the  git subdirectory is the main directory    I ll experiment with it when I can later  but this would seem to indicate that setting core bare   true is equivalent to removeing core bare from the config file and setting up the directories properly   At any rate  setting core bare   true certainly will let you push to it  but I m not sure if the presence of project files will cause some other operations to go awry   It s interesting and I suppose instructive to push to the repository and see what happened locally  i e  run git status and make sense of the results

User · Answer

I just wanted to push to a repository on a network path but git would not let me do that unless that repository was marked as bare  All I needed was to change its config   git config --bool core bare true   No need to fiddle with the files unless you want to keep it clean

User · Answer

In short  replace the contents of repo with the contents of repo  git  then tell the repository that it is now a bare repository   To do this  execute the following commands   cd repo mv  git    repo git   renaming just for clarity cd    rm -fr repo cd repo git git config --bool core bare true   Note that this is different from doing a git clone --bare to a new location  see below

User · Answer

I used the following script to read a text file that has a list of all my SVN repos and convert them to GIT  and later use git clone --bare to convert to a bare git repo     bin bash file  list txt  while IFS  read -r repo name do  printf   s n    repo name   sudo git svn clone --shared --preserve-empty-dirs --authors-file users txt file    programs svn  repo name   sudo git clone --bare  programs git  repo name  repo name git  sudo chown -R www-data www-data  repo name git  sudo rm -rf  repo name done  lt   file    list txt has the format  repo1 name repo2 name   and users txt has the format      no author    Prince Rogers  lt prince rogers nelson payesley park org gt    www-data is the Apache web server user  permission is needed to push changes over HTTP

User · Answer

Here is a little BASH function you can add to your  bashrc or  profile on a UNIX based system  Once added and the shell is either restarted or the file is reloaded via a call to source    profile or source    bashrc   function gitToBare       if   -d   git     then     DIR   pwd       mv  git        rm -fr       mv     git       mv  git         rmdir  git      git config --bool core bare true     cd        mv    DIR      DIR  git       printf    x1b 32mSUCCESS x1b 0m  Git repository converted to       printf  bare and renamed to n    DIR  git n      cd    DIR  git    else     printf    x1b 31mFAILURE x1b 0m  Cannot find a  git directory n    fi     Once called within a directory containing a  git directory  it will make the appropriate changes to convert the repository  If there is no  git directory present when called  a FAILURE message will appear and no file system changes will happen

User · Answer

Your method looks like it would work  the file structure of a bare repository is just what is inside the  git directory   But I don t know if any of the files are actually changed  so if that fails  you can just do  git clone --bare  path to repo   You ll probably need to do it in a different directory  to avoid a name conflict  and then you can just move it back to where you want   And you may need to change the config file to point to wherever your origin repo is

User · Answer

Wow  it s simply amazing how many people chimed in on this  especially considering it doesn t seem that not a single on stopped to ask why this person is doing what he s doing   The ONLY difference between a bare and non-bare git repository is that the non-bare version has a working copy   The main reason you would need a bare repo is if you wanted to make it available to a third party  you can t actually work on it directly so at some point you re going to have to clone it at which point you re right back to a regular working copy version   That being said  to convert to a bare repo all you have to do is make sure you have no commits pending and then just    rm -R    amp  amp  mv  git      amp  amp  rm -R  git   There ya go  bare repo

User · Answer

Simply read  Pro Git Book  4 2 Git on the Server - Getting Git on a Server  which boild down to    git clone --bare my project my project git Cloning into bare repository  my project git     done    Then put my project git to the server  Which mainly is  what answer  42 tried to point out  Shurely one could reinvent the wheel  -

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I think the following link would be helpful  GitFaq  How do I make existing non-bare repository bare     mv repo  git repo git   git --git-dir repo git config core bare true   rm -rf repo

User · Answer

Oneliner for doing all of the above operations   for i in  ls -A     do if    i      git     then rm -rf  i  fi  done  mv  git      rm -rf  git  git config --bool core bare true    don t blame me if something blows up and you didn t have backups  P

User · Answer

First  backup your existing repo    a   mkdir backup   b   cd backup   c   git clone non bare repo   Second  run the following   git clone --bare -l non bare repo new bare repo

User · Answer

Here s what I think is safest and simplest  There is nothing here not stated above  I just want to see an answer that shows a safe step-by-step procedure  You start one folder up from the repository  repo  you want to make bare  I ve adopted the convention implied above that bare repository folders have a  git extension    1  Backup  just in case       a   gt  mkdir backup      b   gt  cd backup      c   gt  git clone    repo  2  Make it bare  then move it      a   gt  cd    repo      b   gt  git config --bool core bare true      c   gt  mv  git    repo git  3  Confirm the bare repository works  optional  since we have a backup       a   gt  cd         b   gt  mkdir test      c   gt  cd test      d   gt  git clone    repo git  4  Clean up      a   gt  rm -Rf repo      b   optional   gt  rm -Rf backup repo      c   optional   gt  rm -Rf test repo

User · Answer

The methods that say to remove files and muck about with moving the  git directory are not clean and not using the  git  method of doing something that s should be simple   This is the cleanest method I have found to convert a normal repo into a bare repo   First clone  path to normal repo into a bare repo called repo git  git clone --bare  path to normal repo   Next remove the origin that points to  path to normal repo  cd repo git git remote rm origin   Finally you can remove your original repo   You could rename repo git to repo at that point  but the standard convention to signify a git repository is something git  so I d personally leave it that way   Once you ve done all that  you can clone your new bare repo  which in effect creates a normal repo  and is also how you would convert it from bare to normal   Of course if you have other upstreams  you ll want to make a note of them  and update your bare repo to include it  But again  it can all be done with the git command   Remember the man pages are your friend

User · Answer

i ve read the answers and i have done this   cd repos mv  git repos git cd repos git git config --bool core bare true   from another answer cd     mv repos git     cd     rm -rf repos    or delete using a file manager if you like   this will leave the contents of repos  git as the bare repos git

User · Answer

Please also consider to use  git clone --mirror path to source repository   From the documentation      Set up a mirror of the source repository  This implies --bare  Compared to --bare  --mirror not only maps local branches of the source to local branches of the target  it maps all refs  including remote-tracking branches  notes etc   and sets up a refspec configuration such that all these refs are overwritten by a git remote update in the target repository

[git] How to convert a normal Git repository to a bare one?

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