How to git bundle a complete repo

Question

I need to transfer a complete repo to a new non-networked machine, preferable as a single file entity. The git bundle allows a git fetch, git pull

Answer 1

First clone the repository, and include the --mirror option.

git clone --mirror git@example.org:path/repo.git

This ensures all remote branched are also local branches ready for bundeling.

Then run

git bundle create repo.bundle --all as described by the answer from Jakub Narębski

Answer 2

I would suggest you tar or zip the .git folder and simply unpack it in the new location and then do git reset --hard HEAD. Everything required for all the branches is under .git and all you should need to do is adjust any remotes in the .git/config file or remove them.

tar cf myrepo.tgz .git
cp myrepo.tgz [USB_STICK]
... move to new machine ...
mkdir myrepo && cd myrepo
tar xpf [USB_STICK]/myrepo.tgz
git reset --hard HEAD

Answer 3

What is the right invocation to:

• Bundle all the branches in the current repo

Simple:

$ git bundle create repo.bundle --all

Here repo.bundle is the name of bundle file you want to create. Note that --all would not include remote-tracking branches... just like ordinary clone wouldn't either.

• Start up the new repo on the destination directory, i.e. get the root commit correctly installed

First, clone is just init + fetch (+ administrativia).

Second, you can use bundle file everywhere the repository URL can be used, so you can simply clone from a bundle file:

$ git clone repo.bundle

This would create repo as a git repository.