Storing Git Repositories using Chunkyard

Sometimes you don't want to store a Git repository on a dedicated server. An easy trick is to use a network drive or a cloud drive (e.g. Dropbox, NextCloud or others) by using a bare repository:

cd ~/SynchronizedFolder
mkdir my-git-project
cd my-git-project
git init --bare

Which can than be used like this:

cd ~/Projects/my-git-project
git add remote origin ~/SynchronizedFolder/my-git-project
git push --set-upstream origin master

I have recently experimented with storing such repositories using my backup tool Chunkyard. After restoring one of these repositories I was surprised that I could not clone the bare repository:

cd ~/temp
git clone ~/Restored/my-git-project

fatal: repository '~/Restored/my-git-project' does not exist

Running ll ~/Restored/my-git-project printed this result:

drwxrwxr-x 5 flo flo 4096 Apr  3 15:57 ./
drwxrwxr-x 4 flo flo 4096 Apr  3 15:57 ../
-rw-rw-r-- 1 flo flo  104 Apr  3 15:57 config
-rw-rw-r-- 1 flo flo   73 Apr  3 15:57 description
-rw-rw-r-- 1 flo flo   23 Apr  3 15:57 HEAD
drwxrwxr-x 2 flo flo 4096 Apr  3 15:57 hooks/
drwxrwxr-x 2 flo flo 4096 Apr  3 15:57 info/
drwxrwxr-x 4 flo flo 4096 Apr  3 15:57 objects/
-rw-rw-r-- 1 flo flo  105 Apr  3 15:57 packed-refs

I ran git gc prior to creating the backup, which explains the packed-refs file. As a result the refs directory became empty. Chunkyard does only care about files, so any empty directory will not be included in a backup. And that caused Git to error out when trying to clone the repository. The fix is rather easy:

cd ~/Restored/my-git-project
mkdir refs