Ugh
Let's say you are a web developer, and you do development on your laptop, then when things are nice and shiny you want to push those changes to the webserver. Seems natural enough, right?
git clone server:/var/www/foo
# ...
git pull
# edit stuff
git commit -a -m 'i edited stuff'
Now, let's say you're a (possibly former) darcs/bzr/mercurial user and this time you're using git. Git has git-push. You read the man page like a good little code monkey, and it seems like it does the same or similar thing to darcs push or hg push. It seems like if you want to push your changes to the server, you'd do this:
git push
Am I off in left field or does this not seem 100% rational? But wo be unto the code monkey that utters this unfortunate incantation. Observe:
$ mkdir foo
$ cd foo
$ git init
Initialized empty Git repository in /private/tmp/foo/.git/
$ echo hello > foo.txt
$ git add foo.txt
$ git commit -m 'hello'
Created initial commit bee50da: hello
1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
create mode 100644 foo.txt
$ cd ..
$ git clone foo bar
Initialized empty Git repository in /private/tmp/bar/.git/
$ cd bar
$ echo goodbye >> foo.txt
$ git commit -a -m goodbye
Created commit 99c13c1: goodbye
1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
$ git push ../foo
Counting objects: 5, done.
Writing objects: 100% (3/3), 248 bytes, done.
Total 3 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0)
Unpacking objects: 100% (3/3), done.
To ../foo
bee50da..99c13c1 master -> master
$ cd ../foo
$ git status
# On branch master
# Changes to be committed:
# (use "git reset HEAD <file>..." to unstage)
#
# modified: foo.txt
#
$ git diff
$ git diff --cache
error: invalid option: --cache
$ git diff --cached
diff --git a/foo.txt b/foo.txt
index a32119c..ce01362 100644
--- a/foo.txt
+++ b/foo.txt
@@ -1,2 +1 @@
hello
-goodbye
$ git log
commit 99c13c1e60888ae2c0e221898411e1cd52ad3815
Author: Hans Fugal <hans@fugal.net>
Date: Mon Nov 10 17:11:57 2008 -0700
goodbye
commit bee50da72798edc47ddc36dbc4f559f141b1e28b
Author: Hans Fugal <hans@fugal.net>
Date: Mon Nov 10 17:11:34 2008 -0700
hello
I promise I didn't fake that. Yes, you saw that correctly—git wants to undo the changes you just committed. If you happen to have a clean working directory, all you need to do to return to sanity is git reset HEAD. If not, heaven help you.
This is totally unacceptable. It's unforgivable on so many levels. At the very least, the manpage should warn you to not push to repositories with working copies. Git should warn you before you push and screw up your repo that it has a working copy checked out. Ideally, git would behave like darcs and update the working copy. Suboptimally, it would behave like mercurial and make it a new revision that you have to manually checkout. But this is simply ridiculous.
So what is the solution? They tell you to use pull. Hello! Is anyone home? My laptop is roving. It's often behind a NATing firewall. I'm supposed to find my public IP address and figure out how to subvert the evil firewalls of the world every time I want to push my changes to the server?
A workaround, and probably the best real-world workflow, is to have a second bare repository or a second branch on the server, push into that, then ssh into the server and pull the changes. I think this page describes how to do that with a second branch, though I'm short on time to actually try it out at the moment.
More of this sickening story in this thread, where you will learn that at least one other person out there has his head screwed on properly, that the developers are more interested in how hooks work (and fail to allow you to do this even if you grok them), and that they've discussed the problem before and decided the correct response is to RTFM (M for minds this time, since the manual was completely unhelpful).
Update: Some of you have been quick to defend git and the design choice of how push behaves. I want to clarify that I don't care so much that push updates the repository but not the working directory. Mercurial works this way too. Not the way I'd do it but it's a valid approach. The problem here is that git push seems like a natural thing to do but screws up your working directory on the remote side. Mercurial doesn't change the working directory, but neither does it silently rebase it and set you up to undo your changes if you're not careful. The problem here is a lack of safety and a lack of warning. They know it's a problem, they've fielded enough "morons". A few words of warning in the man page is all it would take to make me happy.
And now, I have had time to work out a more specific workaround. Here's what I did, and it seems to work well:
# Server setup (set up incoming branch)
server$ git branch incoming
server$ git branch
incoming
* master
origin
# Laptop setup (local master to remote incoming)
laptop$ git config remote.origin.push master:incoming
# Everyday usage
laptop$ git push
Counting objects: 5, done.
Compressing objects: 100% (2/2), done.
Writing objects: 100% (3/3), 279 bytes, done.
Total 3 (delta 1), reused 0 (delta 0)
To server:/tmp/foo
b108a07..a9d3282 master -> incoming
server$ git status
# On branch master
nothing to commit (working directory clean)
server$ git pull . incoming
From .
* branch incoming -> FETCH_HEAD
Updating b108a07..a9d3282
Fast forward
foo.txt | 1 +
1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
You could use hooks to automatically do that git pull . incoming if you liked, making it more like darcs than mercurial.
Updated update: On further thought, the cleanest solution is probably to have a separate master (bare) repository, e.g.
$ mkdir master
$ cd master
$ git init
Initialized empty Git repository in /private/tmp/foo/master/.git/
$ git commit --allow-empty -m initial
Created initial commit 999755e: initial
$ cd ..
$ git clone master live
Initialized empty Git repository in /private/tmp/foo/live/.git/
$ cd live
$ git branch
* master
$ cd ..
$ git clone master laptop
Initialized empty Git repository in /private/tmp/foo/laptop/.git/
$ cd laptop
$ echo hello > foo.txt
$ git add foo.txt
$ git commit -m hello
Created commit 2297bcf: hello
1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
create mode 100644 foo.txt
$ git push
Counting objects: 4, done.
Writing objects: 100% (3/3), 239 bytes, done.
Total 3 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0)
Unpacking objects: 100% (3/3), done.
To /tmp/foo/master/.git
999755e..2297bcf master -> master
$ cd ../live
$ ls
$ git pull
remote: Counting objects: 4, done.
remote: Total 3 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0)
Unpacking objects: 100% (3/3), done.
From /tmp/foo/master/
999755e..2297bcf master -> origin/master
Updating 999755e..2297bcf
Fast forward
foo.txt | 1 +
1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
create mode 100644 foo.txt
$ echo goodbye >> foo.txt
$ git commit -a -m goodbye
Created commit 04f6702: goodbye
1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
$ git push
Counting objects: 5, done.
Writing objects: 100% (3/3), 248 bytes, done.
Total 3 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0)
Unpacking objects: 100% (3/3), done.
To /tmp/foo/master/.git
2297bcf..04f6702 master -> master
$ cd ../laptop
$ git pull
remote: Counting objects: 5, done.
remote: Total 3 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0)
Unpacking objects: 100% (3/3), done.
From /tmp/foo/master/
2297bcf..04f6702 master -> origin/master
Updating 2297bcf..04f6702
Fast forward
foo.txt | 1 +
1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)