All git repos create .git folder inside working directory. Can you change this folder location?
You can tell Git to create the .git
directory somewhere else when you create the repository:
git init --separate-git-dir=/path/to/dot-git-directory .
git init
is used to create a new local repository but you can also run git init
in an existing repository to re-initialize some of its properties. The location of the .git
directory is one of them.
The documentation says:
Running
git init
in an existing repository is safe. It will not overwrite things that are already there. The primary reason for rerunning git init is to pick up newly added templates (or to move the repository to another place if--separate-git-dir
is given).
Git renames the .git
directory using the name provided as argument to the --separate-git-dir
option. In the working directory it places a file named .git
instead of the .git
directory. The .git
file contains the location of the actual .git
directory.
If you want to put the .git
directory back in the working directory all you have to do is to remove the .git
file and put the .git
directory instead. git init --separate-git-dir
apparently cannot be used for this.
If you don't want to have the .git
directory or a .git
file in your working directory at all, then there are two solutions but both are inconvenient:
--git-dir=/path/to/dot-git-directory
argument to all Git commands;GIT_DIR=/path/to/dot-git-directory
.The first option requires a lot of typing and your Git commands become long and difficult to read.
The second option makes it difficult to work with multiple repositories. Every time you want to work in a different repository you have to remember to set the $GIT_DIR
environment variable with the correct path; otherwise you will mess the things up.