Convert a Git Repo to a Bare Repo

Gregg

If you have a git repository that you haven’t cloned from a remote location, i.e., one that was created locally, it is easy to convert it to a bare repository. This process describes how to:

  1. Take a “normal” git repository
  2. Move the .git directory to another location
  3. Convert it to a bare repository

Suppose you have a git repository called repo. To convert it to a bare repository, execute the following commands:

cd repo mv .git ../repo.git # renaming just for clarity cd .. rm -fr repo cd repo.git git config --bool core.bare true

Now you can clone it like a “normal” repository:

$ cd .. $ git clone repo.git myrepo $ cd myrepo/ $ ls file-1.txt file-2.txt file-3.txt file-4.txt file-5.txt $ git status On branch master Your branch is up to date with 'origin/master'. nothing to commit, working tree clean $

Please note that repositories from a remote location do not have all of their git branch contents and history stored locally, so doing this to a repository cloned from a remote will result in a repository that will be missing data.