Remote issue with a PostgreSQL Server (Cloning, Pushing, and Pulling)

[EtherealK]

Hi, I am new to using Kart and I am having a problem whenever I try to push, pull, or clone from a PostGIS Server I am connected to using PostgreSQL. I have already created a Kart repository stored in the server, and every other functionality works locally in terms of branches, merges, etc. However, any time I try to use one of the three mentioned functions I encounter the error: "git: 'remote postgresql' is not a git command. See 'git --help'."
I believe I understand that this means there is just not a command to do that, but the documentation says that it should work. I tried doing this both through the Kart plugin for QGIS and through command, but the error came up the same for both. Does anyone have any idea what I can do to fix this, or if there's something else I should be doing to try to get the push/pull/clone functions working? Or if I should be using something different that does allow for those functions?
Thanks

[olsen232]

Hi EtherealK
Let me clarify what Kart does and does not do.
Kart supports a variety of formats as a working copy. The only way git ever presents your files to you is as files on your filesystem, but Kart has a few different ways of presenting your geometry data to you: as tables in a GPKG, or on a PostGIS server, or on an MSSQL server, or on a MySQL server. So all of the commands involving working copies - kart create-workingcopy, checkout, reset etc will work on one or other of these types of working copy, depending on how you configure kart. Kart considers your working copy to be your "local" copy of the data, which Kart maintains and where you will make your edits and commit changes.

Kart also has a concept of remote Kart servers from which geometry data can be pulled and to which it can be pushed. Kart servers are machines which have Kart installed and you have ssh access to, setting one up is similar to setting up a git server. Kart servers store all of your geometry information on the filesystem - they don't use databases like GPKG, PostGIS, etc.

The reason the commands are not working is probably because they expect the remote to be a git-style remote such as:
kart@data.koordinates.com:linz/nz-roads-addressing-2 and not a postgres URL.

[EtherealK]

Okay, thank you. I'm pretty new to all this, so if I wanted to be able to push and pull, I would want to set up a remote Kart server and push/pull from there? How would I go about doing that?

[olsen232]

From https://docs.kartproject.org/en/latest/pages/basic_usage_tutorial.html#hosting-repositories-remotely

Because Kart uses Git for data transfer and storage, you can host a Kart repository anywhere you can host a Git repository - for example, GitHub, Bitbucket, or by setting up your own Git server. These will all work equally well for Kart or Git, unless you want to perform a spatially-filtered clone - in this case, you will need to set up your own Git server using the Git executable bundled with Kart, since any standard Git build doesn’t support spatial filtering.

If you follow the relevant link there you'll end up in the Git documentation at git-scm.com - that's because if you successfully set up a git server, it works almost perfectly as a Kart server. As noted you can also use git servers that other people maintain for you (like github.com)

[EtherealK]

Thanks! I'll get to work setting that up and figuring it out then. I appreciate the help!