The refspec exemplified

Though the refspec isn't the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about the Git configuration, it is actually quite close. In a lot of the Git commands the refspec is used, but often implicitly, that is, the refspec is taken from the configuration file. If you don't remember setting a refspec configuration, you are probably right, but if you cloned the repository or added a remote, you'll have a section in .git/config, which looks something like the following (this is for the Jgit repository):

[remote "origin"]
        url = https://git.eclipse.org/r/jgit/jgit
        fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*

The fetch line contains the configured refspec to fetch for this repository.

Getting ready

In this example, we'll be using the jgit repository as our server repository, but we have to make a clone of it to a bare repository so we can push it. You can't push to the checked out branch on a non-bare repository as this can overwrite the work area and index...