Question

I’m trying to establish workflows for creating new projects and for setting old projects to be version controlled through Git. It is finally all making sense, except for one step. When I create a new project, initialize Git in it and do an initial commit I then do a git clone --bare ./myproject //myserver/myshare/myproject.git. I then set up a remote, git remote add origin //myserver/myshare/myproject.git. These seem to work fine. But, when I do git branch -a, it does not show there being a master branch on the remote.

The way I am getting around this right now is, I just git clone //myserver/myshare/myproject.git to a different location and the remote is already set up, and the master branch is present on the remote. I have no idea what could be wrong, especially since the only difference it seems is which way the remote is set up.

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Nothing is wrong. From the git clone man page:

   --bare
       Make a bare GIT repository. That is, instead of creating <directory> and placing the administrative files in <directory>/.git, make the <directory>
       itself the $GIT_DIR. This obviously implies the -n because there is nowhere to check out the working tree. Also the branch heads at the remote are
       copied directly to corresponding local branch heads, without mapping them to refs/remotes/origin/. When this option is used, neither remote-tracking
       branches nor the related configuration variables are created.

Bare repositories don’t map the master commit pointer to refs/remotes/origin/master, but they don’t have to. Bare repos are vital when setting up remotes that others might push to or pull from, but they aren’t where you do day-to-day dev work. It sounds like you have an origin. Unless you’re setting up another remote, stick with git clone //myserver/myshare/myproject.git for your local repository.