Dropbox and Git bare repository

Here's a nice tip for those who want to make development with Git but don't have a place to put their shared repository. You could use Github, but remember that any sources you put in the free version of Github are open for all users. So if you don't want to share your sources with everyone you could use e.g. Dropbox to share your code with your fellow developer(s) or just to backup your sources.

Create a bare repository

Create the directory which you want to share:

mkdir mydev.git

cd mydev.git

Initialize the repository and modify the Git config to enable shared mode (not needed for Dropbox but good to have if you move your bare repository to a proper server).

git init --bare

add sharedrepository=true to the config file.

Now you have a proper bare repository.

Share the repository in Dropbox

Copy the folder you initialized in your Dropbox folder. If you like, you can share it with your fellow developer(s).

Connect to your "Central Repository" and share your work

You can connect to your bare repository by executing the following command:

git clone PATH_TO_DROPBOX_FOLDER/mydev.git

cd mydev

Create some work to share

touch my_example_file.txt

git add my_example_file.txt

git commit -m "my first commit"

Git commit commits your work to the local repository but doesn't commit it to the central repository, so to share your work you need to push your work to the central repository.

git push

To get the work from the central repository, you need to do a pull operation:

git pull

Last I should warn you that we've had some issues with corrupting the central repository. We got everything working again by doing a new commit and push by the person who last changed the repository. However, despite the occasional corruptions in the central repository, there are several advantages to using Dropbox as the central repository, and it will make the development work a lot easier.