'Effective' Pulling without merge or commandline Git?

Brand new to Git as of yesterday, sorry. I am running 2016B on my main PC and 2015B on 'student' PC's. I work on my main PC and have Git Client installed, so I can enjoy all the functionality. However, I also have Matlab installed on a bunch of student PC's without the Git client. The idea of my workflow is that all commits are done on my PC (or other PC's with Git Client installed), but the student PC's need to be able to periodically pull the data.

But, once the local repo is setup, without the Git Client, they can't merge, ergo they can't pull. I don't need to merge, but overwrite. I have admin restrictions on installing Git on these machines. Is my only option to delete and reclone the repo every time I want to pull? It seems like a really heinous workaround. I then stop seeing the benefit of Matlab's native Git at all without the client installed.

Answer 1

[Sean de Wolski]

You may have more luck on Stack Overflow for git workflows.

What are you using for the remote? My team uses an internal gitlab server which has roles and permissions as well as protected branches. You could give the students guest access so they can pull and use locally but not merge or push to a protected branch.

https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/protected_branches.html

[Curran Eggertson]

Thanks for your answer Sean.

From my limited perspective, this isn't so much a question about workflows, but rather the capabilities of the native Git support of Matlab if the computer doesn't have Command Line Git available.

Pulling and merging isn't explicitly available without Command Line Git installed in parallel to Matlab, yet there is clone, push, fetch, etc. If I get the indication here that I've got to bite the bullet and spend the time to ticket for admin rights and install Git on all these machines to just get the ability to pull, then yeah, I'll have to do that. Then I'd have full functionality and can figure most of it out on my own or transition to stackoverflow for further Git Q's.

My remote is literally just a bare repo that I initialized in Matlab on our private department server. Like I said, I am new! At the moment, I wasn't planning on restricting selected branches, but that sounds like a good next step once I can get everything working as desired.

[Sean de Wolski]

Interesting, I didn't realize you could use a subset of MATLAB's git without command line git installed. Good to know!

To be perfectly honest, I only use MATLAB's current folder git for simple diffing (especially of mlx/mat/mlapp files) and quick reverts. I use Tortoise for everything else.