Hosting Git Repository in Windows

Here are some steps you can follow to get the git daemon running under Windows:

(Prerequisites: A default Cygwin installation and a git client that supports git daemon)

Step 1: Open a bash shell

Step 2: In the directory /cygdrive/c/cygwin64/usr/local/bin/, create a file named "gitd" with the following content:

#!/bin/bash

/usr/bin/git daemon --reuseaddr --base-path=/git --export-all --verbose --enable=receive-pack

Step 3: Run the following cygrunsrv command from an elevated prompt (i.e. as admin) to install the script as a service (Note: assumes Cygwin is installed at C:\cygwin64):

cygrunsrv   --install gitd                          \
            --path c:/cygwin64/bin/bash.exe         \
            --args c:/cygwin64/usr/local/bin/gitd   \
            --desc "Git Daemon"                     \
            --neverexits                            \
            --shutdown

Step 4: Run the following command to start the service:

cygrunsrv --start gitd

You are done. If you want to test it, here is a quick and dirty script that shows that you can push over the git protocol to your local machine:

#!/bin/bash

echo "Creating main git repo ..."
mkdir -p /git/testapp.git
cd /git/testapp.git
git init --bare
touch git-daemon-export-ok
echo "Creating local repo ..."
cd
mkdir testapp
cd testapp
git init
echo "Creating test file ..."
touch testfile
git add -A
git commit -m 'Test message'
echo "Pushing master to main repo ..."
git push git://localhost/testapp.git master

If you are working in a Windows environment, have you considered Mercurial? It is a distributed version control system like Git, but integrates far more neatly and easily with Windows.

I'm currently using cygwin's ssh daemon on Windows to serve up and allow remote access to my repo. It works quite well, I have complete control over who accesses my repo by their ssh certificates, and the performance blazes, even over remote WAN and VPN links.

Another solution is to use Gitosis. It is a tool that makes hosting repos much easier.

Have you considered using the cygwin layer? See this link.

You do not need to host a service, you can also create a shared repository on a shared drive. Just create a bare repository. You can clone an existing repo into a shared one using: "git clone --bare --shared [source] [dest]". You can also init a new repository using "git init --bare --shared=all".

Henk

I think what Henk is saying is that you can create a shared repository on a drive and then copy it to some common location that both of you have access to. If there is some company server or something that you both have ssh access to, you can put the repository someplace where you can SCP it back to your own computer, and then pull from that. I did this for my self a little while, since I have two computers. It's a hassle, but it does work.