# Pull from and Push to a git Repository

# Prerequisites

The server has been set up as a git server
A bare repository has been created on the server
You can authenticate as the user where the repository is being hosted

# Working with the Remote Repository

First, clone the repository from the server to your development machine.

git clone ssh://[username]@[your server's IP address/hostname][path to repository]

Example:

git clone ssh://myuser@myserver/home/myuser/repos/my-app

You can use localhost as the hostname as long as...

you're using a virtual machine,
you're running git clone from the host machine, and
you have port 22 forwarded

You will be prompted to enter password for myuser.

A new directory named my-app (or whatever your repository is named) is created on your development machine. Change into it.

cd myrepo

You can pull any new changes from the remote repository at any time.

git pull

And you can push your changes to it.

git push

# Public Key Authentication

If you haven't set up public key authentication...

you will need to share the password for myuser with each developer who needs pull/push access.
Developers will also need to enter the password each time they pull/push.

Neither of the above conditions is ideal. You can solve both of these issues by setting up public key authentication.

Make sure you have...

set up public key authentication on your server
added your public key to the server user's authorized_keys file
added your server as a configured host on your workstation

The instructions for all of these is in the guide for Public Key Authentication.

Public Key Authentication

../05-ssh-keys/

With a configured host, users can interact with a server using the alias in the configuration file.

git clone ssh://myuser@myserver/home/myuser/repos/myrepo

myserver here is the name of the configured host set up in ~/.ssh/config, not necessarily the server's hostname (although they can be the same).

You will be asked for your SSH key passphrase rather than the server user's password. This eliminates the need to share that password.

If you don't want to enter the SSH key passphrase each time, you can use an SSH agent (recommended - find more information online) or you can use a key pair with an empty passphrase (not recommended).

Now that pull and pushing code to the server is possible, you'll probably want to serve some apps. The next step would be installing the software of your choice (such as Node.js) that is required to run any apps.