Octopress and github confusion

Question

I'm new to Octopress and relatively new to git/github.

I cloned (installed/setup) the Octopress repo locally:

git clone git://github.com/imathis/octopress.git sitename
cd sitename
bundle install
rake install

Cool - so now I have the source to Octopress and a skeleton site on my local drive.

Question 1 - Updating

According to the docs I should be able to update to the latest Octopress changes via:

git pull octopress master     # Get the latest Octopress
bundle install                # Keep gems updated
rake update_source            # update the template's source
rake update_style             # update the template's style

but this results in an error:

[sitename]$ git pull octopress master
fatal: 'octopress' does not appear to be a git repository
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

Why is this failing?

Question 2 - Where does "my" stuff live?

Now I need to create my own github repo for the assets that I create, correct? If so, do I store everything there, or just the things that are specific to my blog (posts, pages, etc.)? My guess is that I have to create a repro at github and push my changes there... but again, I'm not sure if that is correct. Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

Answer 1

In response to question 2:

Octopress repositories have two branches, source and master. The source branch contains the files that are used to generate the blog and the master contains the blog itself (your posts, etc.).

When the local folders are initially configured according to the Octopress Setup Guide, the master branch is stored in a subfolder named ‘_deploy’. Since the folder name begins with an underscore, it is ignored when you git push origin source. Instead, the master branch (which contains your blog posts) gets updated when you rake deploy.

You might find this blog post helpful.

Answer 2

You should have a remote named octopress in your repo to do this:

[sitename]$ git pull octopress master

Try adding a remote named octopress and point it to https://github.com/imathis/octopress.git:

git remote add octopress github.com/imathis/octopress.git

Answer 3

The octopress documentation is a bit lax in places. It describes making the octopress remote when you use github pages as the deployment: http://octopress.org/docs/deploying/github/

This info should (I think) be added up front, as most people will likely want to maintain their blog in their own remote repo named origin.