Why can't I push to this bare repository?

Can you explain what is wrong with this workflow?

$ git init --bare bare
Initialized empty Git repository in /work/fun/git_experiments/bare/
$ git clone bare alice
Cloning into alice...
done.
warning: You appear to have cloned an empty repository.
$ cd alice/
$ touch a
$ git add a
$ git commit -m "Added a"
[master (root-commit) 70d52d4] Added a
 0 files changed, 0 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
 create mode 100644 a
$ git push
No refs in common and none specified; doing nothing.
Perhaps you should specify a branch such as 'master'.
fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly
error: failed to push some refs to '/work/fun/git_experiments/bare'

Doesn't git push always push to the repository I cloned from?

Yes, the problem is that there are no commits in "bare". This is a problem with the first commit only, if you create the repos in the order (bare,alice). Try doing:

git push --set-upstream origin master

This would only be required the first time. Afterwards it should work normally.

As Chris Johnsen pointed out, you would not have this problem if your push.default was customized. I like upstream/tracking.

If you:

 git push origin master

it will push to the bare repo.

It sounds like your alice repo isn't tracking correctly.

cat .git/config

This will show the default remote and branch.

If you

 git push -u origin master

You should start tracking that remote and branch. I'm not sure if that option has always been in git.