1

I've created a new empty gitolite repo into which I want to push a snapshot (on my workstation) of my original git repo. I followed the instructions to do git push --all followed by git push --tags. This seemed to work great, but I find that some branch references didn't get pushed. Running git show-ref on my workstation shows a number of refs of the sort refs/remotes/origin/branchXyz, but doing git show-ref directly on the gitolite repo doesn't show this branch name at all (I expected to see it appear as refs/heads/branchXyz. How can I push the remaining branches?

Thanks!

torngat
  • 635
  • 1
  • 5
  • 16

1 Answers1

2

If your local repo was itself a clone (of 'origin', another non-gitolite repo), it didn't have all the branches locally, only references to remotes ('origin') branches.

You should first pull all branches or track them all:

$ git remote update  
$ git pull --all

# or:

remote=origin ; for brname in `git branch -r | grep $remote | grep -v master | grep -v HEAD | awk '{gsub(/[^\/]+\//,"",$1); print $1}'`; do git branch --set-upstream $brname  $remote/$brname ; done

(The last command is detailed here)

(Both options are also detailed in "Track all remote git branches as local branches", and in "Can “git pull --all” update all my local branches?" or "How do I clone all remote branches with Git?")

Then push --all to your new (gitolite) upstream repo.

Community
  • 1
  • 1
VonC
  • 1,262,500
  • 529
  • 4,410
  • 5,250
  • Thanks for the answer, and also thanks for all the useful links. I was under the impression that `git fetch` pulled the history of the whole repository and that, therefore, I would have all of the remote branches as well. If I understand correctly, this is wrong; `git fetch` will only pull the history for the remote branches that are tracked. `git clone` is insufficient, I would also need to do a `git pull --all` before having any hope of being able to do a `git push --all`. Is that right? – torngat Jun 01 '12 at 15:38
  • @torngat no, `git fetch` pull all branches too (they are in `remotes/origin/heads`), you are just not tracking them, and `git push --all` pushes only tracked branches (the ones in `refs/heads/`). Look at `git branch -a` after a `git fetch` – KurzedMetal Jun 01 '12 at 15:42
  • @tornga > `git fetch` pull all branches too: yes, but not tracked by local branches. Hence your issue after pushing to gitolite. – VonC Jun 01 '12 at 15:50
  • @VonC `git remote update` and `git pull -all` had no visible effect (`git branch`) still doesn't report any other local branch than master. However, the other command you suggested did seem to have an effect. But I'm puzzled by the messages. Here's an example: `Branch origin/BR_EM_141 set up to track local branch master.` Does this mean that I have a local branch named BR_EM_141 that is tracking master? I want it to track remote BR_EM_141. – torngat Jun 01 '12 at 16:50
  • @torngat: that means the second command isn't exactly working as intended. I have replaced in my own (answer edited), with a link to http://stackoverflow.com/a/6300386/6309 which explains it. – VonC Jun 01 '12 at 17:48