Single developer Git with Dropbox backups: finding a secure, simple configuration
I would like to use Git
for a single developer project, but how do I make backups using Dropbox?
There are actually several posts discussing either Git
working with a single developer or using Git
Dropbox with multiple developers, but the ones I saw did not address the biggest issue:
If Dropbox maintains a local `.git` repository while it changes, the repository can be left in an inconvenient, unrecoverable state.
To be clear, let's say I have a directory Working
containing a repository Git
as a subdirectory .git
. This is my main repository. The from ~/Dropbox
symbolic link points to "Work", thus creating a backup .git
. I never push or pull anything: everything is local.
If I perform a local transaction Git
on Working
that changes in this way .git
, Dropbox may decide to back up at that point .git
. If my machine crashed then, I would have a useless repository .git
on the Dropbox server: I would not be able to recover files from it.
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I have always recommended not to use DropBox directly with the contents of the .git folder: there are too many files that could potentially change too many times.
I suggested in Backing up a local Git repository to use : this only creates one file (which acts like a Git repository) and DropBox won't have a copy problem. git bundle
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