Verify a bare Git repository has data

Question

How does one verify that files were pushed to a bare repository correctly? Since bare repositories have no working tree, you obviously can't do a simple git log because it isn't picked up as a git repo.

I realize there are solutions like suggested here, but I'd like to know how to do it using the command line.

Note that I'm not looking to see *what* is in it; simply that there *is* something in it (i.e. not an empty bare repo) — Qix - MONICA WAS MISTREATED, Mar 01 '13 at 06:56
`git log` doesn't even look at the workspace, it should work just fine in a bare repository. — vonbrand, Mar 02 '13 at 04:27

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 01 '13 at 07:01

3

git log works just fine. Bare repositories are still recognized as repositories. Obviously. :)

git@koiru /var/git/repositories/sanpera.git $ ls
total 37k
-rw-r--r--   1 git nogroup 1.2k Mar  1 06:00 FETCH_HEAD
-rw-r--r--   1 git nogroup   23 Sep 14  2011 HEAD
drwxr-xr-x   2 git nogroup 4.1k Sep 14  2011 branches/
-rw-------   1 git nogroup  236 Jun 12  2012 config
-rw-r--r--   1 git nogroup   34 Jun 12  2012 description
drwxr-xr-x   2 git nogroup 4.1k Jun 12  2012 hooks/
drwxr-xr-x   2 git nogroup 4.1k Sep 14  2011 info/
drwxr-xr-x 222 git nogroup 4.1k Sep  9 06:00 objects/
drwxr-xr-x   5 git nogroup 4.1k Oct 18  2011 refs/

git@koiru /var/git/repositories/sanpera.git $ git log
commit a60f2ad3cc118eb7fd290be56448bcef82fe8252
Author: Eevee <git@veekun.com>
Date:   Sun Sep 2 18:22:50 2012 -0700

    Stub a few more tests.

...

answered Mar 01 '13 at 07:01

Eevee

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I'm getting a `fatal: bad default revision 'HEAD'` – Qix - MONICA WAS MISTREATED Mar 01 '13 at 07:02
And yea, the "obviously" bit was a bit snarky. I should have worded that better ;) – Qix - MONICA WAS MISTREATED Mar 01 '13 at 07:02
having no `HEAD` sounds like a pretty good indication that you _don't_ have any data. check the `refs/heads` directory; that lists all the branches. if it's empty, you got nothin'. – Eevee Mar 01 '13 at 07:05
VonC's answer *did* show there was a correct branch. I had forgotten to pull all of the branches before I pushed back to another remote. – Qix - MONICA WAS MISTREATED Mar 01 '13 at 07:15

score 3 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:30

3

You could try and use git ls-remote:

 git ls-remote http://www.kernel.org/pub/scm/git/git.git

 # or, also a bare repo
 git ls-remote https://github.com/git/git

As long as it doesn't return just the emtpy tree SHA1, that should mean there are commits in that upstream repo.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:30

Community

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1

answered Mar 01 '13 at 07:02

VonC

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Perfect! This worked perfectly. Note that this also works with `ssh://` protocol URLs. – Qix - MONICA WAS MISTREATED Mar 01 '13 at 07:04

Verify a bare Git repository has data

2 Answers2