How do I check if a repository is bare?

Question

I'm getting the warning

warning: You did not specify any refspecs to push, and the current remote
warning: has not configured any push refspecs. The default action in this
warning: case is to push all matching refspecs, that is, all branches
warning: that exist both locally and remotely will be updated.  This may
warning: not necessarily be what you want to happen.
warning:
warning: You can specify what action you want to take in this case, and
warning: avoid seeing this message again, by configuring 'push.default' to:
warning:   'nothing'  : Do not push anything
warning:   'matching' : Push all matching branches (default)
warning:   'tracking' : Push the current branch to whatever it is tracking
warning:   'current'  : Push the current branch

which is (I think) a warning that remote is not bare. Yet I intended remote to be bare, and the directory (which is in the form foo.git) doesn't have a .git directory in it. How do I check that it is bare?

Extra information: The remote repository is on a computer with git 1.5.4.3, and the local repository has git 1.6.3.3. Both machines are Ubuntu - the local one is Karmic Koala, the remote one is an older version.

Answer 1

You could use (from git config):

 git config --add push.default current

to specify what you want to push by default.

or:

 git config --global push.default matching

if you have many repositories.

current: push the current branch to a branch of the same name.

Check also if the warning was not followed by an error message like in this SO question.

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So your destination repo may be a bare one, but, as said in Sensible Git Refspecs:

When you do a git pull, fetch, push and some others you need to specify a refspec for the current repository.
A refspec describes the mapping between the local reference and the remote one, so you can push (or pull etc) the master branch head and store it as your origin branch head. Basically it’s a way of mapping branches between repos.

---

Note: it is true than from Git1.6.3, :

"git push" into a branch that is currently checked out will be refused by default.
You can choose what should happen upon such a push by setting the configuration variable receive.denyCurrentBranch in the receiving repository.

But I do not think this is what you are seing right now.

---

As mentioned in ddd (at the bottom)

To make it a "real" bare repo, just delete all the files except .git, then mv .git/* .; rmdir .git.
Finally, edit the file called config and change bare = false to bare = true.

So if your destination repo has a config file with bare = true, it is a bare repo.

Answer 2

The message you’re getting means that your remote repository is empty (which has nothing to do with being bare). When pushing into a remote repository for the first time you need to specify what to push:

git push origin master

This will push your current master branch to the remote repository. Subsequent invocations of git push will pushing “matching” branches, i.e. if there’s a “master” branch in the remote repository your local “master” branch will be pushed to it.