Question

Does Git support any commands that would allow me to commit directly from a local/working tree into a remote repository? The normal workflow requires a “git add”, at least, to populate the object database with copies of the file contents, etc.

I understand that this is NOT the normal, expected Git workflow. But I noticed that Git already supports downloading directly from the repository, with no local repo (“git archive”), so it seems reasonable that there might be a similar uploading operation.

Alternatively, if there isn’t such a command in the core Git itself, does any 3rd-party software support direct remote writes?

Answer 1

As far as I know, no (not directly, see my completed answer at the end):

Here is the official Git data workflow, between a local and a remote repo:

_{(source: osteele.com)}

As you can see, git add is related with the index, and will not yet influence your local repo.
The all set of commands are here to help enforce some publication policies:

_{(source: osteele.com)}

---

The only way to directly influence a remote repo with local changes (as changes in your working directory are entirely unknown to Git) would be to:

git diff -p origin > diff_not_in_origin.patch

send the patch and see that the “origin” server has some kind of trigger in place which will git am said patch automatically.