Move source code from one repository to another in GitHub

Tip of the Week - How to move a full Git repository.

January 22nd 2016  Peter Van de Voorde in Tip of the Week, Git

This week I'll show you how you can move a full Git repository from one remote server to another. The steps I'm using even allow you to choose which branches and tags to include.

Let’s call the original repository ORI and the new one NEW, here are the steps I took to copy everything from ORI to NEW:

1. Create a local repository in the temp-dir directory using:

   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
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   git clone <url to ORI repo> temp-dir
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

   
2. Go into the temp-dir directory.
3. To see a list of the different branches in ORI do:

   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
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   git branch -a
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

   
4. Checkout all the branches that you want to copy from ORI to NEW using:

   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
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   git checkout branch-name
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

   
5. Now fetch all the tags from ORI using:

   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
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   git fetch --tags
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

   
6. Before doing the next step make sure to check your local tags and branches using the following commands:

   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
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   git tag
   
   
   
   
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   git branch -a
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

   
7. Now clear the link to the ORI repository with the following command:

   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
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   git remote rm origin
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

8. Now link your local repository to your newly created NEW repository using the following command:

   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
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   git remote add origin <url to NEW repo>
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

9. Now push all your branches and tags with these commands:

   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
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   git push origin --all
   
   
   
   
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   git push --tags
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

   
10. You now have a full copy from your ORI repo.

Extra:

If you want to simply copy the entire repository you can use

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git clone --mirror <url to ORI repo> temp-dir

to replace step 1 to 5.

how to add the local project to a new repository in github

In many cases, I create the project locally, develop it. And then I realize that it would be great if its available it Github. This is more of like, bottom-up approach.

Following is the list of steps to achieve this.

1. Create the remote repository, and get the URL such as git@github.com:/youruser/somename.git or https://github.com/youruser/somename.git
   If your local GIT repo is already set up, skips steps 2 and 3

   ---

2. Locally, at the root directory of your source, git init
   2a. If you initialize the repo with a .gitignore and a README.md you should do a git pull {url from step 1} to ensure you don't commit files to source that you want to ignore ;)
3. Locally, add and commit what you want in your initial repo (for everything, git add . then git commit -m 'initial commit comment')

   ---

4. to attach your remote repo with the name 'origin' (like cloning would do)
   git remote add origin [URL From Step 1]
5. to push up your master branch (change master to something else for a different branch):
   git push origin master
6. Execute git pull origin master to pull the remote branch so that they are in sync.

How to remove files recursively in Git

A tool used to generate .bak files when it is used for comparing two files. One way to fix this is to mentioned the extension .bak in .gitignore file. The other way is to manually find and the remove the files recrusively

find . | grep .bak | xargs rm -rf