How to create a remote Git repository from a local

Question

I have a local Git repository. I would like to make it available on a remote, ssh-enabled, server. How do I do this?

Answer 1

A remote repository is generally a bare repository — a Git repository that has no working directory. Because the repository is only used as a collaboration point, there is no reason to have a snapshot checked out on disk; it’s just the Git data. In the simplest terms, a bare repository is the contents of your project’s .git directory and nothing else.

You can make a bare git repository with the following code:

$ git clone --bare /path/to/project project.git

One options for having a remote git repository is using SSH protocol:

A common transport protocol for Git when self-hosting is over SSH. This is because SSH access to servers is already set up in most places — and if it isn’t, it’s easy to do. SSH is also an authenticated network protocol and, because it’s ubiquitous, it’s generally easy to set up and use.

To clone a Git repository over SSH, you can specify an ssh:// URL like this:

$ git clone ssh://[user@]server/project.git

Or you can use the shorter scp-like syntax for the SSH protocol:

$ git clone [user@]server:project.git

In both cases above, if you don’t specify the optional username, Git assumes the user you’re currently logged in as.

The Pros

The pros of using SSH are many. First, SSH is relatively easy to set up — SSH daemons are commonplace, many network admins have experience with them, and many OS distributions are set up with them or have tools to manage them. Next, access over SSH is secure — all data transfer is encrypted and authenticated. Last, like the HTTPS, Git and Local protocols, SSH is efficient, making the data as compact as possible before transferring it.

The Cons

The negative aspect of SSH is that it doesn’t support anonymous access to your Git repository. If you’re using SSH, people must have SSH access to your machine, even in a read-only capacity, which doesn’t make SSH conducive to open source projects for which people might simply want to clone your repository to examine it. If you’re using it only within your corporate network, SSH may be the only protocol you need to deal with. If you want to allow anonymous read-only access to your projects and also want to use SSH, you’ll have to set up SSH for you to push over but something else for others to fetch from.

For more information, check the reference: Git on the Server - The Protocols