Here’s something I tried out today. I don’t think it will work out in the long term, but I spent time on it so might as well make note of it here in case it helps someone else.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I have multiple machines – one at office, couple at home – and usually my workflow involves having whatever I am working on being present in a local folder (not in Dropbox) managed by Git, with changes pushed and pulled to GitHub. That works fine with the caveat that sometimes I forget to push the changes upstream and leave office\/ home and and then I am unable to work at home\/ office because my latest code is on the other machine while GitHub and the machine I am on don’t have those changes.<\/p>\n
One solution would be to have a scheduled task (or some hook to PowerShell ISE) that automatically commits & pushes my changes to GitHub periodically (or whenever I click save). I haven’t explored those but they seem wasteful. I like my commits to be when I make them, not run automatically, resulting in lots of spurious entries in my history.<\/p>\n
My idea is to have the working tree in Dropbox. This way Dropbox takes care of syncing my latest code across all my machines. I don’t want to move the Git repository into Dropbox for fear of corruption\/ sync conflicts, so I’ll keep that out of Dropbox in a local folder on each machine. My revised workflow will be that I am on a particular machine, I’ll\u00a0make some changes, maybe commit & push them … or maybe not, then I’ll go to the other machine and I can continue making changes there and push them off when I am happy. Or so I hope …<\/p>\n
Consider the case of two machines. One’s GAIA, the other’s TINTIN. Let’s start by setting up a repository and working tree on GAIA.\u00a0<\/p>\n
D:\\Dropbox\\Scripts>git init --separate-git-dir c:\\Users\\Rakhesh\\Git\\Test.git Test\r\nInitialized empty Git repository in c:\/Users\/Rakhesh\/Git\/Test.git\/\r\n\r\nD:\\Dropbox\\Scripts>cd Test\r\n\r\nD:\\Dropbox\\Scripts\\Test>git remote add origin git@github.com:rakheshster\/Test.git\r\n\r\nD:\\Dropbox\\Scripts\\Test>echo \"test\" > blah.txt\r\n\r\nD:\\Dropbox\\Scripts\\Test>git add blah.txt\r\n\r\nD:\\Dropbox\\Scripts\\Test>git commit -m \"First commit\"\r\n[master (root-commit) 4fd5580] First commit\r\n 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)\r\n create mode 100644 blah.txt\r\n\r\nD:\\Dropbox\\Scripts\\Test>git push -u origin master\r\nCounting objects: 3, done.\r\nWriting objects: 100% (3\/3), 219 bytes | 0 bytes\/s, done.\r\nTotal 3 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0)\r\nTo git@github.com:rakheshster\/Test.git\r\n * [new branch] master -> master\r\nBranch master set up to track remote branch master from origin.\r\n<\/pre>\nStraight-forward stuff. My working tree is in Dropbox, Git repository is in a local folder. I make a commit and push it to GitHub. So far so good.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Now I get to TINTIN.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Thanks to Dropbox TINTIN already has the working tree. But it doesn’t have the Git repository (as that’s not a part of Dropbox). So even though the working tree appears on TINTIN I can’t issue any Git commands against it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
D:\\Dropbox\\Scripts\\Test>git status\r\nfatal: Not a git repository: c:\/Users\/Rakhesh\/Git\/Test.git\r\n<\/pre>\nThe one time workaround is to pull the repository and working elsewhere and simply copy the repository to where the working tree in Dropbox expects it (
c:\/Users\/Rakhesh\/Git\/Test.git<\/code> in the above example)<\/p>\nC:\\Temp>git clone git@github.com:rakheshster\/Test.git Test\r\nCloning into 'Test'...\r\nWarning: Permanently added the RSA host key for IP address '192.30.252.129' to the list of known hosts.\r\nremote: Counting objects: 3, done.\r\nremote: Total 3 (delta 0), reused 3 (delta 0)\r\nReceiving objects: 100% (3\/3), done.\r\nChecking connectivity... done.\r\n\r\nC:\\Temp>cd Test\r\n\r\nC:\\Temp\\Test>xcopy \/E \/H \/K \/I .git C:\\Users\\Rakhesh\\Git\\Test.git\r\n\r\nC:\\Temp\\Test>cd ..\r\n\r\nC:\\Temp>rmdir \/s \/q Test<\/pre>\nHere’s what the
xcopy<\/code> switches do:<\/p>\n\n
\/K<\/code> Copies attributes. Normal Xcopy will reset read-only attributes.<\/li>\n\/E<\/code> Copies directories and subdirectories, including empty ones.<\/li>\n\/H<\/code> Copies hidden and system files also.<\/li>\n\/I<\/code> If destination does not exist and copying more than one file,\u00a0assumes that destination must be a directory.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nI use
xcopy<\/code> because the Git repository is hidden and I can’t usemove<\/code>. The various switches ensurexcopy<\/code> copies everything over.<\/p>\nUpdate<\/strong>: While writing this post I realized the above is an over-kill. All I need to do on TINTIN is the following:<\/p>\n
C:\\Users\\Rakhesh\\Git>git clone --bare git@github.com:rakheshster\/Test.git<\/pre>\nSimple! This creates a bare-repository in the expected location.<\/p>\n
Now\u00a0I open the
config<\/code> file in the Git repository and add a pointer to the working tree (not necessary, but is a good practice). That is, I add to the[core]<\/code> section:<\/p>\nworktree = D:\/Dropbox\/Scripts\/Test<\/pre>\nUpdate2<\/strong>: If you create a bare<\/em> repository as above\u00a0remove from the
[core]<\/code> section (if it exists):<\/p>\nbare = true<\/pre>\nNote<\/strong>: I had some trouble with the bare repository idea a couple of times so I wouldn’t recommend it. Specifically, it didn’t pick up some folder changes. If it doesn’t work for you, use the approach I went with initially.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Now TINTIN too is in sync with GAIA and GitHub.\u00a0<\/p>\n
D:\\Dropbox\\Scripts\\Test>git status\r\nOn branch master\r\nYour branch is up-to-date with 'origin\/master'.\r\n\r\nnothing to commit, working directory clean<\/pre>\nGood!<\/p>\n
Changing things<\/h2>\n
Let’s add a file and commit it on GAIA. And while we are at it push it to GitHub.\u00a0<\/p>\n
D:\\Dropbox\\Scripts\\Test>echo \"def\" >> blah.txt\r\n\r\nD:\\Dropbox\\Scripts\\Test>git add blah.txt\r\n\r\nD:\\Dropbox\\Scripts\\Test>git commit -m \"Second commit\"\r\n[master ab21cb9] Second commit\r\n 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)\r\n\r\nD:\\Dropbox\\Scripts\\Test>git push\r\nCounting objects: 5, done.\r\nWriting objects: 100% (3\/3), 253 bytes | 0 bytes\/s, done.\r\nTotal 3 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0)\r\nTo git@github.com:rakheshster\/Test.git\r\n a68e729..ab21cb9 master -> master<\/pre>\nOnce again, thanks to Dropbox TINTIN gets the changes in the working tree. But does it have the history? No! And because of that it will think there are changes to commit:<\/p>\n
D:\\Dropbox\\Scripts\\Test>more blah.txt\r\n\"test\"\r\n\"def\"\r\n\r\nD:\\Dropbox\\Scripts\\Test>git status\r\nOn branch master\r\nYour branch is up-to-date with 'origin\/master'.\r\n\r\nChanges not staged for commit:\r\n (use \"git add ...\" to update what will be committed)\r\n (use \"git checkout -- ...\" to discard changes in working directory)\r\n\r\n modified: blah.txt\r\n\r\nno changes added to commit (use \"git add\" and\/or \"git commit -a\")<\/pre>\nI can’t simply commit this change on TINTIN and push it upstream because that would conflict with the server:<\/p>\n
D:\\Dropbox\\Scripts\\Test>git add blah.txt\r\n\r\nD:\\Dropbox\\Scripts\\Test>git commit -m \"Commit from TINTIN (will fail)\"\r\n[master 4db4171] Commit from TINTIN (will fail)\r\n 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)\r\n\r\nD:\\Dropbox\\Scripts\\Test>git push\r\nTo git@github.com:rakheshster\/Test.git\r\n ! [rejected] master -> master (fetch first)\r\nerror: failed to push some refs to 'git@github.com:rakheshster\/Test.git'\r\nhint: Updates were rejected because the remote contains work that you do\r\nhint: not have locally. This is usually caused by another repository pushing\r\nhint: to the same ref. You may want to first integrate the remote changes\r\nhint: (e.g., 'git pull ...') before pushing again.\r\nhint: See the 'Note about fast-forwards' in 'git push --help' for details.<\/pre>\nThat’s because while both GAIA and TINTIN because from the same commit point, now GAIA (and upstream) are at commit A which is a descendant of the starting point, while TINTIN is at commit B which is also a descendant<\/em> of the same starting point. A and B are siblings, so if the push were to succeed the previous commit and its history would be lost. (These are known as non-fast-forward updates and the
git-push<\/code> help page<\/a> has a diagram explaining this).\u00a0<\/p>\nI can’t simply pull the changes from upstream either as the same conflict applies there too!<\/p>\n
D:\\Dropbox\\Scripts\\Test>git pull\r\nremote: Counting objects: 3, done.\r\nremote: Total 3 (delta 0), reused 3 (delta 0)\r\nUnpacking objects: 100% (3\/3), done.\r\nFrom github.com:rakheshster\/Test\r\n a68e729..ab21cb9 master -> origin\/master\r\nUpdating a68e729..ab21cb9\r\nerror: Your local changes to the following files would be overwritten by merge:\r\n blah.txt\r\nPlease, commit your changes or stash them before you can merge.\r\nAborting<\/pre>\nOne\u00a0workaround is to
stash<\/code> the changes on TINTIN – which is fine in this case because they are not really changes, we have already captured it upstream and on GAIA – and thenpull<\/code> the changes. (I could alsocommit<\/code> and thenpull<\/code> changes from GitHub,merge<\/code>-ing them).\u00a0<\/p>\nD:\\Dropbox\\Scripts\\Test>git stash\r\nSaved working directory and index state WIP on master: a68e729 First commit\r\nHEAD is now at a68e729 First commit\r\n\r\nD:\\Dropbox\\Scripts\\Test>git pull\r\nUpdating a68e729..ab21cb9\r\nFast-forward\r\n blah.txt | 1 +\r\n 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)\r\n\r\nD:\\Dropbox\\Scripts\\Test>git log\r\ncommit ab21cb90234fa7445345601794fe83d1b7d24bae\r\nAuthor: Rakhesh Sasidharan <...@rakhesh.com>\r\nDate: Thu Feb 19 23:54:50 2015 +0400\r\n\r\n Second commit\r\n\r\ncommit a68e729845f873087b01af85146090028fed4bfd\r\nAuthor: Rakhesh Sasidharan <...@rakhesh.com>\r\nDate: Thu Feb 19 18:24:18 2015 +0400\r\n\r\n First commit<\/pre>\nNote that TINTIN has the correct history too.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Update<\/strong>: If
git pull<\/code> complains about changes it is also possible to do agit reset<\/code> as below:\u00a0<\/p>\ngit pull\r\n# this gives errors about conflicted files\r\n# you can also do git fetch --all\r\n# the latter will only fetch changes, won't try to merge and complain\r\n\r\ngit reset --hard origin\/master<\/pre>\nThis is what I do nowadays<\/strong>. What
git reset --hard<\/code> does is that it resets the working tree andHEAD<\/code> to the commit upstream (origin\/master<\/code>), effectively replacing\u00a0all the tracked local files with versions from upstream.\u00a0<\/p>\nChanging things (part 2)<\/h2>\n
Now on to the scenario for which I am mixing Dropbox and GitHub. I make changes on GAIA and commit these, but forget to push them upstream.\u00a0<\/p>\n
D:\\Dropbox\\Scripts\\Test>echo \"ghi\" >> blah.txt\r\n\r\nD:\\Dropbox\\Scripts\\Test>git commit -m \"Third commit\"\r\n\r\nD:\\Dropbox\\Scripts\\Test>git add blah.txt\r\n\r\nD:\\Dropbox\\Scripts\\Test>git commit -m \"Third commit\"\r\n[master 6bc2105] Third commit\r\n 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)<\/pre>\nWhen I get to TINTIN, the changes are there but once again it isn’t aware of the commit. And unlike in the previous case, it can’t pull any changes from GitHub as it too does not know of any changes. All I can do is add the changed file and commit it. Note that this will be a different commit from the one at GAIA (which TINTIN is not aware of).\u00a0<\/p>\n
D:\\Dropbox\\Scripts\\Test>more blah.txt\r\n\"test\"\r\n\"def\"\r\n\"ghi\"\r\n\r\nD:\\Dropbox\\Scripts\\Test>git status\r\nOn branch master\r\nYour branch is up-to-date with 'origin\/master'.\r\n\r\nChanges not staged for commit:\r\n (use \"git add ...\" to update what will be committed)\r\n (use \"git checkout -- ...\" to discard changes in working directory)\r\n\r\n modified: blah.txt\r\n\r\nno changes added to commit (use \"git add\" and\/or \"git commit -a\")\r\n\r\nD:\\Dropbox\\Scripts\\Test>git add blah.txt\r\n\r\nD:\\Dropbox\\Scripts\\Test>git commit -m \"Third commit (from TINTIN)\"\r\n[master 5ff7ced] Third commit (from TINTIN)\r\n 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)<\/pre>\nAnd then I push it upstream when I am done working on TINTIN:<\/p>\n
D:\\Dropbox\\Scripts\\Test>git push\r\nCounting objects: 5, done.\r\nWriting objects: 100% (3\/3), 272 bytes | 0 bytes\/s, done.\r\nTotal 3 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0)\r\nTo git@github.com:rakheshster\/Test.git\r\n ab21cb9..5ff7ced master -> master<\/pre>\nBack at GAIA the next day, when I check the
status<\/code> I’ll see the following:<\/p>\nD:\\Dropbox\\Scripts\\Test>git status\r\nOn branch master\r\nYour branch is ahead of 'origin\/master' by 1 commit.\r\n (use \"git push\" to publish your local commits)\r\n\r\nnothing to commit, working directory clean<\/pre>\nThis is because as far as GAIA knows I had made a commit but didn’t push it to GitHub. So it tells me my local branch is ahead by 1 commit. Git never checks the remote end in real time when I issue a
git status<\/code>. It merely reports based on the cached information it has.\u00a0<\/p>\nI can’t of course
push<\/code> this commit to GitHub\u00a0because that has long moved on. We are back to a non-fast-forward update scenario here because GitHub has a commit from TINTIN which is a sibling to the commit from GAIA that we are now trying to push.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\nThankfully, in this particular case I can do a
git pull<\/code> and it will do amerge<\/code> of the commit from GAIA and GitHub. Amerge<\/code> is possible here because the commits have a common ancestor and changes can be incorporated without any conflicts.\u00a0<\/p>\nD:\\Dropbox\\Scripts\\Test>git pull\r\nremote: Counting objects: 3, done.\r\nremote: Total 3 (delta 0), reused 3 (delta 0)\r\nUnpacking objects: 100% (3\/3), done.\r\nFrom github.com:rakheshster\/Test\r\n ab21cb9..5ff7ced master -> origin\/master\r\nMerge made by the 'recursive' strategy.<\/pre>\nAnd just to confirm, GAIA has the whole history, including a commit indicating the
merge<\/code>:<\/p>\nD:\\Dropbox\\Scripts\\Test>git log\r\ncommit 918a2fc73d230107f25820644664aed3c45549c5\r\nMerge: 6bc2105 5ff7ced\r\nAuthor: Rakhesh Sasidharan <...@rakhesh.com>\r\nDate: Fri Feb 20 00:22:32 2015 +0400\r\n\r\n Merge branch 'master' of github.com:rakheshster\/Test\r\n\r\ncommit 5ff7cedbb198761f57ca0d721c858e62e57503d7\r\nAuthor: Rakhesh Sasidharan <...@rakhesh.com>\r\nDate: Fri Feb 20 00:17:23 2015 +0400\r\n\r\n Third commit (from TINTIN)\r\n\r\ncommit 6bc2105619cf71e6bbca511fcf31c04333c993a5\r\nAuthor: Rakhesh Sasidharan <...@rakhesh.com>\r\nDate: Fri Feb 20 00:14:26 2015 +0400\r\n\r\n Third commit\r\n\r\ncommit ab21cb90234fa7445345601794fe83d1b7d24bae\r\nAuthor: Rakhesh Sasidharan <...@rakhesh.com>\r\nDate: Thu Feb 19 23:54:50 2015 +0400\r\n\r\n Second commit\r\n\r\ncommit a68e729845f873087b01af85146090028fed4bfd\r\nAuthor: Rakhesh Sasidharan <...@rakhesh.com>\r\nDate: Thu Feb 19 18:24:18 2015 +0400\r\n\r\n First commit<\/pre>\nI can now push this to GitHub (and later
pull<\/code> to TINTIN).\u00a0<\/p>\nD:\\Dropbox\\Scripts\\Test>git push\r\nCounting objects: 2, done.\r\nDelta compression using up to 8 threads.\r\nCompressing objects: 100% (2\/2), done.\r\nWriting objects: 100% (2\/2), 334 bytes | 0 bytes\/s, done.\r\nTotal 2 (delta 1), reused 0 (delta 0)\r\nTo git@github.com:rakheshster\/Test.git\r\n 5ff7ced..918a2fc master -> master<\/pre>\nThat’s it!<\/p>\n
Wrapping up<\/h2>\n
As you can see having your working tree in Dropbox, with the Git repository in a local folder elsewhere, is possible but\u00a0involves some minor tweaking around. I am going to try this for some of my repositories going forward, and will update this post if I come across any gotchas.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Fringe cases<\/h2>\n
Occasionally when I am on one of my machines and do a
git pull<\/code> I get the following:<\/p>\nD:\\Dropbox\\Scripts\\PSScripts>git pull\r\nUpdating 5f81434..f3f8e2c\r\nerror: The following untracked working tree files would be overwritten by merge:\r\n Update-Hosts\/Update-Hosts.ps1\r\n Update-Hosts\/install.bat\r\n Update-Hosts\/schtask.xml\r\nPlease move or remove them before you can merge.\r\nAborting<\/pre>\nIn the above case I had created a new folder (called Update-Hosts) on another machine and moved files to it. The machine I am currently on has these changes via Dropbox but isn’t aware of them from a Git point of view. So I did what Git suggests – remove this folder and
git pull<\/code> again. I won’t lose anything because the remote copy has the latest changes anyway.<\/p>\nD:\\Dropbox\\Scripts\\PSScripts>rmdir \/s \/q Update-Hosts\r\n\r\nD:\\Dropbox\\Scripts\\PSScripts>git pull\r\nUpdating 5f81434..f3f8e2c\r\nFast-forward\r\n Update-Hosts.ps1 => Update-Hosts\/Update-Hosts.ps1 | Bin 11782 -> 10060 bytes\r\n Update-Hosts\/install.bat | 14 ++++++++++++++\r\n Update-Hosts\/schtask.xml | Bin 0 -> 5920 bytes\r\n 3 files changed, 14 insertions(+)\r\n rename Update-Hosts.ps1 => Update-Hosts\/Update-Hosts.ps1 (85%)\r\n create mode 100644 Update-Hosts\/install.bat\r\n create mode 100644 Update-Hosts\/schtask.xml<\/pre>\nYou can see it’s picked up the new directory and moves\/ renames.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Here’s something I tried out today. I don’t think it will work out in the long term, but I spent time on it so might as well make note of it here in case it helps someone else.\u00a0 I have multiple machines – one at office, couple at home – and usually my workflow involves … Continue reading Using Git and Dropbox (along with GitHub but working tree in Dropbox)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[102],"tags":[219,103],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rakhesh.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2292"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rakhesh.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rakhesh.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rakhesh.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rakhesh.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rakhesh.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2292\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rakhesh.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rakhesh.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rakhesh.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}