Git push error '[remote rejected] master -> master (branch is currently checked out)'

The error message error: refusing to update checked out branch: refs/heads/master is emitted by the remote repository and it means you're trying to push code to remote non-bare repository that has different code currently checked out in the working directory. The best way to avoid this problem is to push to bare repositories only - this problem cannot ever happen with a bare repository.

You can simply convert your remote repository to bare repository (there is no working copy in the bare repository - the folder contains only the actual repository data).

Execute the following command in your remote repository folder:

git config --bool core.bare true

Then delete all the files except .git in that folder. And then you will be able to perform git push to the remote repository without any errors.

You can get around this "limitation" by editing the .git/config on the destination server. Add the following to allow a git repository to be pushed to even if it is "checked out":

[receive]
denyCurrentBranch = warn

or

[receive]
denyCurrentBranch = false

The first will allow the push while warning of the possibility to mess up the branch, whereas the second will just quietly allow it.

This can be used to "deploy" code to a server which is not meant for editing. This is not the best approach, but a quick one for deploying code.

With a few setup steps you can easily deploy changes to your website using a one-liner like

git push production

Which is nice and simple, and you don't have to log into the remote server and do a pull or anything. Note that this will work best if you don't use your production checkout as a working branch! (The OP was working within a slightly different context, and I think @Robert Gould's solution addressed it well. This solution is more appropriate for deployment to a remote server.)

First you need to set up a bare repository somewhere on your server, outside of your webroot.

mkdir mywebsite.git
cd mywebsite.git
git init --bare

Then create file hooks/post-receive:

#!/bin/sh
GIT_WORK_TREE=/path/to/webroot/of/mywebsite git checkout -f

And make the file executable:

chmod +x hooks/post-receive

On your local machine,

git remote add production git@myserver.com:mywebsite.git
git push production +master:refs/heads/master

All set! Now in the future you can use git push production to deploy your changes!

Credit for this solution goes to http://sebduggan.com/blog/deploy-your-website-changes-using-git/. Look there for a more detailed explanation of what's going on.

An article I found that might be useful to others is Git in 5 minutes.

I had an Xcode project under Git version control that I wanted to push up to a Virtual Distributed Ethernet (VDE) I have in a DC. The VDE runs Centos 5.

None of the articles I read about Git talked about bare repositories. It all sounded so simple until I tried what I thought should be easy coming from an SVN background.

The suggestions here to make the remote repository bare worked. Even better for my requirements was to clone the Xcode project to projectname.git, copy that to the remote server; then pushes magically worked. The next step will be getting Xcode to push without errors about commits, but for now I'm okay doing it from Terminal.

So:

cd /tmp (or another other directory on your system)<br/>
git clone --bare /xcode-project-directory projectname.git<br/>
scp -r projectname.git sshusername@remotehost.com:repos/<br/>

To push changes from your Xcode project after you've committed in Xcode:

cd /xcode-project-directory<br/>
git push sshusername@remotehost.com:repos/projectname.git<br/>

I'm certain there is a smoother more sophisticated way of doing the above, but at a minimum this works. Just so everything is clear, here are some clarifications: /xcode-project-directory is the directory your xcode project is stored in. It's probably /Users/Your_Name/Documents/Project_Name. projectname is literally the name of the project, but it can be anything you care to call it. Git doesn