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POTwo git repos for the same files
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copied!<p>On my development computer I've previously used git simply as an automatic backup / recovery system. I know this isn't quite how git is intended to be used, but it has been very effective for me. I have a simple script that runs every 5 minutes (a la Windows Task Scheduler) and checks to see if any files have changed. If so, it creates a new commit (with the message "Automatic Commit") and pushes it to a mirror I have on an external hard drive. I can extend this to push to mirrors in other locations, too.</p> <p>I don't want to stop doing this, as the system has saved my life more than once. Between power failures, accidental file deletions, or a client suddenly deciding they liked how the project looked 2 months ago and they want to revert all the changes - the ability to roll everything back to any point in time has been invaluable.</p> <p>Now the problem comes when I want to put one of these repositories on github for collaborative work. Every time I push to github it creates tens or hundreds or commits, often with incomplete code since I was in the middle of modifying a file when five minutes rolled around.</p> <p>I would like to have a second repository of sorts residing in the same directory and watching over the same files, however I want it to only commit manually. This way when I push to github there are only meaningful commits and all my automatic backups are hidden from prying eyes.</p> <p>Is this even possible?</p> <p>Quick Edit -</p> <p>Googling around, could the <code>git rebase</code> command be of any use? It seems like it may destroy all the automatic commits, which isn't exactly the ideal behavior.</p> <p>Long Edit -</p> <p>This little project has been a <strong>NIGHTMARE</strong>.</p> <p>Following the advice from @janos I set set up a second repository in every folder. To set these up I simply used <code>git clone</code> on the current repository. I modified my <code>autosave.bat</code> file to utilize <code>GIT_DIR</code> and <code>GIT_WORK_TREE</code> and thought everything would be dandy... it wasn't</p> <p>First, try the following on a Windows 7 PC for fun:</p> <pre><code>test.bat -------- CD C:\SomeFolder FOR /D %%i in (*) DO ( CD %%i set GIT_WORK_TREE=%cd% echo %GIT_WORK_TREE% CD .. ) </code></pre> <p>The results of this should be obvious, right? We step through every sub-directory in <code>SomeFolder</code>, set it to the current <code>GIT_WORK_TREE</code>, then output <code>GIT_WORK_TREE</code>. The output:</p> <pre><code>C:\SomeFolder C:\SomeFolder C:\SomeFolder C:\SomeFolder .... </code></pre> <p>It looks like batch scripts are executed out-of-order (<code>set GIT_WORK_TREE=%cd%</code> is processed before <code>CD %%i</code> has completed). You can only imagine the horror this wreaked on my backups when every single project was in every other project's repository.</p> <p>I tried to get around this using <code>git --git-dir=backup.git --work-tree=%cd%</code> only to get errors when folders had a space in the name (I had to put <code>%cd%</code> in quotes)</p> <p>I finally got that working and <code>backup.git</code> wasn't recognized as a git directory and was <strong>added to the repository!</strong> I added the following to my .gitignore to be safe:</p> <pre><code># git is really making me angry today /.git/ /backup.git/ </code></pre> <p>With that I think it's finally working, but I shudder to test my remote backups and see if they're actually set up correctly.</p>

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