I have been working on my local on a web app and I was ask to push it to an empty(only read me file on it) private repo created just for this project. I'm new to git
and I'm having trouble doing so.
Can someone tell me what am I doing wrong?
I first navigate to the main folder of the app in my local using command line and initialize git. After, I try cloning the remote repo with:
git clone git://github.com/somename/Web-App.git
but I get the error:
Cloning into 'Web-App'... fatal: remote error: Repository not
found.
I know the repo is there.. Do I actually need to clone or pull from that remote first or is there a way to just push to that repo.
Again, all I'm trying to do is to get the files that I have in my local pushed to a specific repo that I was given access to.
I will really appreciate any help.
Let us say 'yourWebApp' is the folder you have your local web app. Change it to the directory
cd 'yourWebApp'
Init git in the folder
git init
Now add your github url as a remote
git remote add origin git://github.com/somename/Web-App.git
Here origin is the short name for your url
Now pull the read me file from the github repo
git pull origin master
Now push your web app to the github repository
git push origin master
Here it is assumed that you are in your master, the default branch
Here pulling your readme files is necessary to merge the readme file with your local work. If your github repository is empty, you can skip the pull and directly push to your github repository.
On the other hand, if you want to use clone, there is no need to init as clone automatically sets up git in the directory. clone also sets your remote git url. In that case, your workflow should be
clone -> push
To push to a private repository, you probably want to fork it, push your changes to your copy (which will stay private), and then create a pull request. When I tried to push directly to a private repository, I got the puzzling "remote: Repository not found. fatal" message, even though I could pull just fine.
git clone is a little bit overkill for this purpose.
The mechanism that git provides to deal with other servers is fittingly called remote.
This is typically automatically set up when you clone, explaining why that was your instinct.
Documentation can be found here:
http://git-scm.com/book/en/Git-Basics-Working-with-Remotes
Some summary commands:
git remote add [remote-name] [branch-name]
git fetch [remote-name]
git push [remote-name] [branch-name]
In addition, you might consider setting up tracking branches, which will eliminate the need to qualify the remote name each time you type a command. Documentation for that use case is here.
http://git-scm.com/book/en/Git-Branching-Remote-Branches
Usually, if you clone a repository, git executes
git checkout -b master [remotename]/master
Your tracking branch doesn't have to be master though.
Hope this helps.