Creating a Remote Git Repo

Here are some steps I used to create a remote Git repo based on my local files.

Create the folder for the new application and change to that directory.
> mkdir /var/www/html/newapp
> cd /var/www/html/newapp

Make sure git is installed, if not install it
> sudo apt-get install git-core git-doc

Initialize the folder to become a git directory
> git init

********* Now switch to your local files ***********
> cd ~/myapp

Initialize git with the local folder as well
>git init

Tell git about yourself
>git config user.name "Your Name"
>git config user.email "Your Email"

Now, tell git which server to talk too
>git remote add origin username@yourdomain.com:/var/www/html/newapp/.git
Make sure that this user has SSH access to the box.

>git config branch.master.remote origin
>git config branch.master.merge refs/heads/master

Make your initial commit and push it to the remote server.
>git commit -a -m "Initial commit"
>git push origin master

And viola! Your files will be pushed to the remote server. Now, I was wondering why when I went to access the server, the files didn't seem to be in the working directory, even though I could see the log showed my Initial commit. It turns out that when things are pushed to master, they enter a limbo state. You have to do a git checkout -f, to actual have the commit become live. Note that doing a git checkout -f, will throw away any changes that have been made on the remote server.

To make the updating of the server easier, you can do the following:
> vi /var/www/html/newapp/.git/hooks/post-receive
Add - git checkout -f
Save the file
>chmod +x /var/www/html/newapp/.git/hooks/post-receive

2 Good articles for programmers

5 Tips for creating good code every day; or how to become a good software developer
http://www.makinggoodsoftware.com/2009/05/15/5-tips-for-creating-good-code-every-day-how-to-become-a-good-software-developer/

5 Top non-technical mistakes made by programmers
http://www.makinggoodsoftware.com/2009/07/07/5-top-non-technical-mistakes-made-by-programmers/