How to convert a normal Git repository to a bare o

Question

How can I convert a 'normal' Git repository to a bare one?

The main difference seems to be:

• in the normal git repository you have a .git folder inside the repository containing all relevant data and all other files build your working copy

• in a bare Git repository, there is no working copy and the folder (let's call it repo.git) contains the actual repository data

Answer 1

First, backup your existing repo:

(a)  mkdir backup

(b)  cd backup

(c)  git clone non_bare_repo

Second, run the following:

git clone --bare -l non_bare_repo new_bare_repo

Answer 2

In short: replace the contents of repo with the contents of repo/.git, then tell the repository that it is now a bare repository.

To do this, execute the following commands:

cd repo
mv .git ../repo.git # renaming just for clarity
cd ..
rm -fr repo
cd repo.git
git config --bool core.bare true

Note that this is different from doing a git clone --bare to a new location (see below).

Answer 3

The methods that say to remove files and muck about with moving the .git directory are not clean and not using the "git" method of doing something that's should be simple. This is the cleanest method I have found to convert a normal repo into a bare repo.

First clone /path/to/normal/repo into a bare repo called repo.git

git clone --bare /path/to/normal/repo

Next remove the origin that points to /path/to/normal/repo

cd repo.git
git remote rm origin

Finally you can remove your original repo. You could rename repo.git to repo at that point, but the standard convention to signify a git repository is something.git, so I'd personally leave it that way.

Once you've done all that, you can clone your new bare repo (which in effect creates a normal repo, and is also how you would convert it from bare to normal)

Of course if you have other upstreams, you'll want to make a note of them, and update your bare repo to include it. But again, it can all be done with the git command. Remember the man pages are your friend.

Answer 4

Simply read

Pro Git Book: 4.2 Git on the Server - Getting Git on a Server

which boild down to

$ git clone --bare my_project my_project.git
Cloning into bare repository 'my_project.git'...
done.

Then put my_project.git to the server

Which mainly is, what answer #42 tried to point out. Shurely one could reinvent the wheel ;-)

Answer 5

I used the following script to read a text file that has a list of all my SVN repos and convert them to GIT, and later use git clone --bare to convert to a bare git repo

#!/bin/bash
file="list.txt"
while IFS= read -r repo_name
do
 printf '%s\n' "$repo_name"
 sudo git svn clone --shared --preserve-empty-dirs --authors-file=users.txt file:///programs/svn/$repo_name 
 sudo git clone --bare /programs/git/$repo_name $repo_name.git
 sudo chown -R www-data:www-data $repo_name.git
 sudo rm -rf $repo_name
done <"$file"

list.txt has the format

repo1_name
repo2_name

and users.txt has the format

(no author) = Prince Rogers <[e-mail]>

www-data is the Apache web server user, permission is needed to push changes over HTTP

Answer 6

Oneliner for doing all of the above operations:

for i in `ls -A .`; do if [ $i != ".git" ]; then rm -rf $i; fi; done; mv .git/* .; rm -rf .git; git config --bool core.bare true

(don't blame me if something blows up and you didn't have backups :P)