title: What are the consequences of using receive.denyCurrentBranch in Git?
body: <p>I have a Git repository. I have cloned the repository and can commit my local changes. When I push my changes to the server it works.</p>
  
  <p>As soon as I create a branch, I checkout the branch, commit my work and then checkout the master branch. I then merge my local changes into the master branch. When I try to push to the server I get the following exception:</p>
  
  <pre><code>Welcome to Git (version 1.7.11-preview20120620)
  
  Run 'git help git' to display the help index.
  Run 'git help &lt;command&gt;' to display help for specific commands.
  
  $ git push origin master:master
   Counting objects: 9, done.
   Delta compression using up to 4 threads.
   Compressing objects: 100% (7/7), done.
   Writing objects: 100% (8/8), 13.68 KiB, done.
   Total 8 (delta 2), reused 1 (delta 0)
   Unpacking objects: 100% (8/8), done.
   remote: error: refusing to update checked out branch: refs/heads/master
   remote: error: By default, updating the current branch in a non-bare repository
   remote: error: is denied, because it will make the index and work tree inconsistent
   remote: error: with what you pushed, and will require 'git reset --hard' to match
   remote: error: the work tree to HEAD.
   remote: error:
   remote: error: You can set 'receive.denyCurrentBranch' configuration variable to
  
   remote: error: 'ignore' or 'warn' in the remote repository to allow pushing into
  
   remote: error: its current branch; however, this is not recommended unless you
   remote: error: arranged to update its work tree to match what you pushed in some
  
   remote: error: other way.
   remote: error:
   remote: error: To squelch this message and still keep the default behaviour, set
  
   remote: error: 'receive.denyCurrentBranch' configuration variable to 'refuse'.
   To c:/jGit
   ! [remote rejected] master -&gt; master (branch is currently checked out)
   error: failed to push some refs to 'c:/gitRepository'
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>One solution is to run the following command:</p>
  
  <pre><code>git config receive.denyCurrentBranch ignore
  </code></pre>
  
  <p><strong>After this it works, but I would like to know why I need to use this option. Is this the only option? What are the consequences of doing this?</strong></p>
  
  <p>What I would really like to do is create branches, merge them into the master branch and then push my changes to the server.</p>