What does git "updating currently checked out branch" warning mean?

Question

When I do a git push, I see the following:

warning: updating the currently checked out branch; this may cause confusion,
as the index and working tree do not reflect changes that are now in HEAD.

I Googled for this message, and all I can find is a git mailing list discussion where the authors try to decide exactly how to make this message better to communicate to me what the real problem is.

How did I cause this, and how do I fix it?

Pretension

possible duplicate of Git push error '[remote rejected] master -> master (branch is currently checked out)' – Filiate

@WilliamTate no, this post deals with a warning, linked post deals with error – Ressler

Yes it is, I think it's the warning you received instead of the error in previous versions of Git. – Gensler

Possible duplicate of What is this Git warning message when pushing changes to a remote repository? – Franzen

Answer 1

This happens when you are pushing to a non-bare repo. A bare repo is one that consists solely of a .git directory; a non-bare repo also includes a checkout. In general, you should not push to a non-bare repo; in fact, in future version of git, that will be forbidden. If you push to a non-bare repo, then the HEAD of that repo will be out of sync with the index and the working copy.

If you're creating a repo that people are going to want to push to, then you should create it using git init --bare (and git init --bare --shared if several user accounts need access to it), or git clone --bare if you're creating it by cloning an existing repo.

Chaworth

Thank you. This important warning was telling me that I was cloned from and pushing to the wrong repository!! I have a bare repository, similarly named to another repository which I accidentally cloned! – Pretension

Is it okay to pull from a non-bare repository to a non-bare. I guess not? – Shanghai

@Keyo Yes, it's fine to pull from one non-bare repo to another. But you shouldn't push into a non-bare repo. – Chaworth

Actually, you can push to a non-bare repository just fine, you just can't push to the one branch that is currently checked out. – Gensler

@Nowhereman This is true, my answer is a bit of a simplification. In general, pushing to a non-bare repo is discouraged, even if only pushing to the currently checkout out branch would actually break anything. If you find yourself pushing to a non-bare repo, it probably means you're doing something wrong. – Chaworth

I'm not sure I've ever seen it discouraged, and I know of several perfectly valid workflows with Git that involve pushing to a non-bare repo. For example, I routinely version palintext notes with git, one repo on my laptop and one on my workstation. On each computer, a different branch is checked out so I can safely push it to the other computer, where I'll merge (I usually try to only do fast-forwards or I rebase). – Gensler

Answer 2

In short, your remote repository is no longer a bare one, and you pushing on the remote checkout branch.

See "How to publish a Git repository":

A bare repository is one without a checked out working copy of the code. It only contains the git database.
As a general rule you should never push into a repository that contains changes in the working copy.
To ensure this doesn't happen, we're making the server repository a bare repository - it has no working copy

From here:

Note that the target of a "push" is normally a bare repository (i.e., with no work tree of its own).
You can also push to a repository that has a checked-out working tree, but the working tree will not be updated by the push.
This may lead to unexpected results if the branch you push to is the currently checked-out branch.

If a detached work tree is defined (which can for instance correspond to a web server's DocumentRoot), you need to :

• have a post-receive hook on your remote repository (like the one described here), running "git checkout -f" and
• ignore the warning message (git config receive.denycurrentbranch ignore)

Check, on your remote repository, the value of git config core.worktree and git config core.bare

Gytle

Note to self: see https://mcmap.net/q/11961/-git-how-to-see-pulled-pushed-changes-in-origin#2041865 for an example of bare repo usage. – Gytle

Answer 3

I made my repository bare by cloning a new, bare, repository from my messed up one, saving the messed-up one just in case, and replacing it with my cloned bare one.

I'm new to git, and when I set up the repsitory, I forgot to use the --bare option. Thanks for all your help!

I've since read the O'Reilly git book and now am a total git convert.

Schnapp