Is there a Step by step instruction creating a Bitbucket repo from a Visual Studio project?
Asked by ic2:

A few years ago I finally managed to have a few VS solutions in the Bitbucket cloud and from time to time I even succeed to commit changes to it (I've got a long list of issues trying to do that but that's another story).

Now I have a new solution which I want to have as a Bitbucket repo so I can commit changes from within Visual Studio and (but that is also a next step) I want to synchronize changes with a fellow programmer.

In VS I have a Bitbucket Extension and I am logged in. I open my solution and from the tab Team Explorer, icon Manage connections. Now I've got 2 options:

1 I can click **Clone** from this extension. What I see is **existing** repos in the cloud. So apparently that won't get me anywhere.

2 I can also click **Create** . I enter the name (=the name of the solution), no description, and as I have to enter a local path I select a directory e:\\BitBucketRepo. In the TeamExplorer I can see *The repository was cloned successfully. Create a new project or solution in this repository.* In the output window it says E:\\BitBucketRepo Cloning into 'E:\\BitBucketRepo\\Projectname  
Warning: You appear to have cloned an empty repository.

Why? What did I do wrong?

A subdirectory has been created in e:\\BitBucketRepo with the name I've chosen and there is a repo added in the cloud. But they all seem empty. I can't click in the Git Changes window and I can only stop VS confirming that an active modal dialog is open (which is nowhere to be seen).

3 When I restart I see, in the lower right corner of VS **Add to source control** while in an earlier project I see the name of the project, master and the changes on which I can click to push to the Bitbucket repo. So apparently the above was not enough to get my project under source control.

I tried what was working earlier, according to my notes: File/Add to source control. But then I have to create a Git repository in GitHub (which I try to avoid by using Bitbucket). When I click Existing remote and enter the URL of my cloud Bitbucket Repo, I can't select Create and Push (greyed out). When I also enter the local Git repository and enter the local path of step 3 it says it already exists. This is not going to work.

So what step do I miss to get my whole project under **Bitbucket** source control, commit changes to my local directory and push it from the Git repository window to the Bitbucket repo?

**EDIT** : I found out that the .git directory of the solution I created in e:\\BitBucketRepo didn't serve any purpose. The VS solutions where it worked had the .git directory *within the solution.*

I prevented that because 1) it seems logical to me to have the local repo on a separate disk and 2) in one of the attempts to get this working, using the solution's directory VS was overwriting all my project files (without warning) with .git files. Fortunately I made a backup as I do not trust VS anywhere. Not sure how to do this right but apparently I need to have it there.

At least one major question remains. I copied the earlier .got content within the project and I see the red icons when something is changed and they disappear when I right click somewhere in the solution, Got/Commit/Commit or Stash. So far so good.

But now, when I click on the lower right git symbol with my project's name (this opens the Git Repository) I do not see a **Push** option (to get the changes to the Bitbucket cloud).

I can now choose Git/Push to Git service, then select Existing Remote, https://MyName@bitbucket.org/MyName/mysolution.git and push from there, but I have to do that every time again.

1 So what can I do to push changes to the bitbucket repo easily? It works in 1 solution, see lower picture and not in the other one, see upper picture.

![Push options missing.jpg](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/147248i9A3047CC3068D739/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "Push options missing.jpg")

2 What should I do differently in the above steps?

I appreciate any help.


Answers:
author: ic2
body: The fact that nobody, not even someone from Atlassian, cared to reply here makes me wonder what the value of Bitbucket is above Github.

Originally it was free for 5 users and private repos while Github wasn't. But that changed.

The only reason I can think of is that Bitbucket isn't Microsoft....


Tags: bitbucket-cloud

cloud