Local Git Remotes

2 hours ago (cblgh.org)

You can also have multiple independent git repos that don't duplicate the full object store, via git clone --reference. It's less relevant in the container era, but otherwise it can save a lot of time and disk space when cloning repos repeatedly

That's what I used to do with git (just recently moved off of SVN) in a shared computer predating github. It works very well!

GitHub has been such a staple of the modern dev that some are now (re)discovering git is distributed.

  • Everything old is new again. I wouldn't be surprised if there were people that thought GitHub invented git.

    • That assumption has come up in almost every conversation I’ve ever had with semi-technical people regarding git, so the confusion is just a fact. It happens so often, I think Linus (or whoever controlled the git trademarks at the time) should have demanded GitHub change their name when it was launched.

What's the purpose of this? I don't get it. Why push at all to "local remote", if you can just keep your changes on a local branch, and push it whenever "remote remote" becomes available again?

  • I use this to push changes to a local encrypted sparse bundle image, and then I periodically rsync that image to a remote disk. Git has no built in encrypted storage, so pushing directly to a remote means you trust that remote.

  • I am also seriously puzzled and don't see the point. Why push to a local remote if the real remote is not reachable? The branch is still not leaving your machine, you are just making a copy of it in another place and now have to manage `local/` refs in addition to `origin/`.

  • A decade ago I was working with an intern who wasn’t allowed access to push to any branch. As I wanted him to get experience with the development cycle, I set up a bare repo in a shared Dropbox folder and had him push code there.

    Aside from that unique use case, I might consider this for storing code on a network attached drive (archival).

you can also setup a local remote which hardlinks the index so it doesn't occupy more space. Why? Idk. You don't want to share stash, rerere-cache, branches whatever.

Also handy if you're running an agent in a container on the local fs. Set up a local clone, contain the agent to that repo folder and have it hack away on that. Later, you step out of the container and do the syncing. You can't use worktrees in this situations.

Bare repos are also pretty cool. You can clone the git mailing list as a bare repo and search for threads there instead of setting up an mbox (same for the kernel obviously)

A "local remote" is a contradiction. Unless the remote is on a different disk you are just wasting space. Even then the point of remotes is for sharing, not for backup/redundancy.

  • The remote can be a shared directory that multiple users have access to, and the working directory is private where each user only has private read + write access.

  • What if you have a few local machines you’re using for development, and want to keep them in sync? This method allows that single central repo without having to bounce all the code through a cloud hosting service.