Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@xxxxxx> writes: > Well, if the OP had used "git push <bla> master" instead of > "... master:master", it would have worked. I am unaware of any tutorial > that suggests the latter, only of tutorials that suggest the former. I did recheck the tutorials, and did not find the code I was using. So there was nothing incorrect in the documentation. As for "master working where "master:master" didn't, this only exposes a more complex set of rules. I was not hoping for a more complex set of rules to learn, as GIT tried to figure out what I meant. I was hoping for a simpler command that did what I told it to do, and I was given it by Junio Hamano. What distracted me was that after the "git --bare init", there seemed to be a incompletely defined setup. This sent me down the wrong path. Although there was a master branch to which HEAD pointed, there was no ref/heads/master file or even a "packed-refs". This also confuses the the "git branch" command, so that when I initial tried "git --bare branch" it seemed unaware of any master branch. I then tried: $ git --bare branch refs/heads/master fatal: Not a valid object name: 'master'. If there isn't an initial master branch, then shouldn't "git branch" be able to create one. And if there is one, shouldn't the automatic rules explained in git-rev-parse man page find it? The error messages from the branch command is what got me on the wrong logical path. The man page for git-init says: This command creates an empty git repository - basically a .git directory with subdirectories for objects, refs/heads, refs/tags, and template files. An initial HEAD file that references the HEAD of the master branch is also created. Which is true, but although there is a HEAD that references the master branch, there isn't really any master branch. It might say something like: This command creates an empty git repository - basically a .git directory with subdirectories for objects, refs/heads, refs/tags, and template files. An initial HEAD file references the refs/heads/master branch which is created with the first commit. This would at least somewhat explain "git branch" results. The man page for git-push seems clear to me now. I should have more closely read the last example. The first example might be changed to say: git push origin master Find a ref that matches master in the source repository (most likely, it would find refs/heads/master), and update (or create) the same ref, refs/heads/master, in the origin repository with it. -- Barry Fishman - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html