How do I clone a local git folder(repo) to a remote server

Question

I see this question asked many times. I've tried every answer.

• this one doesn't work.
• this one doesn't work.
• this one doesn't work
• this one is incomplete and therefore doesn't work
• this one creates a bundle which would need twice the space on both sides. not a good solution for a large repo

Not one of them has actually worked. Maybe something changed in git since they were written?

To be clear: I have a local checkout, I want a similar checkout on remote. I know I can use scp -r . ssh://remote/somefolder but scp is extremely slow so I'd prefer to do it with git.

Some answers said

• on remote

  $ mkdir somefolder
  $ cd somefolder
  $ git init
  

• on local

  $ git push --mirror ssh://remote/somefolder
  
  remote: error: refusing to update checked out branch: refs/heads/master
  remote: error: By default, updating the current branch in a non-bare repository
  remote: error: is denied, because it will make the index and work tree inconsistent
  remote: error: with what you pushed, and will require 'git reset --hard' to match
  remote: error: the work tree to HEAD.
  remote: error: 
  remote: error: You can set 'receive.denyCurrentBranch' configuration variable to
  remote: error: 'ignore' or 'warn' in the remote repository to allow pushing into
  remote: error: its current branch; however, this is not recommended unless you
  remote: error: arranged to update its work tree to match what you pushed in some
  remote: error: other way.  
  remote: error: 
  remote: error: To squelch this message and still keep the default behaviour, set
  remote: error: 'receive.denyCurrentBranch' configuration variable to 'refuse'.
  

Other answers said

• on remote

  $ mkdir somefolder
  $ cd somefolder
  $ git init --bare
  

This fails. Now somefolder is full of git files instead of having a .git folder

Okay let's guess

• on remote

  $ mkdir somefolder
  $ cd somefolder
  $ git init --bare .git
  

Hey I have a .git folder inside somefolder

Let's push

• on local

  $ git push --mirror ssh://remote/somefolder/
  

• on remote

  $ cd somefolder
  $ git status
  fatal: This operation must be run in a work tree
  

The question I want answered is, how do I push a local repo to a remote server such that on the remote server it acts exactly the same as if I had cloned the repo.

In other words if I could do this

• on remote

  git clone ssh://local/somefolder/

I can't do that though since local doesn't have public ip address serving ssh. So instead I want to push it. When it's done remote should have

somefolder
|
+- .git

and the master branch should be checked out, just like it would if I had cloned.

Answer 1

What if you do exactly what it says in the error message:

remote: error: You can set 'receive.denyCurrentBranch' configuration variable to
remote: error: 'ignore' or 'warn' in the remote repository to allow pushing into
remote: error: its current branch; however, this is not recommended unless you
remote: error: arranged to update its work tree to match what you pushed in some
remote: error: other way.

Run this in the remote, non-bare repository:

git config receive.denyCurrentBranch ignore

The warning is there for a reason, though; this will interact poorly with edits to the working tree on remote. If you do this, never edit files directly on the remote without committing them!

Answer 2

How about this:

on remote:

$ mkdir somefolder
$ cd somefolder
$ git init --bare

on local

$ git push ssh://remote/somefolder/

on remote again, only first time

$ mkdir someotherfolder
$ cd someotherfolder
$ git clone somefolder .

on remote again, subsequent calls $git pull

I think you could do this automatically, on subsequent calls with hooks