I have two git repositories:
I lost report.git. I have the cloned.git. I want to clone other repositories from this cloned.git. This is possible but my question is am I missing something? Is cloned.git really the same as the master report.git?
cloned.git still points to the Master report.git. I changed this by removing the options in the .git/config. Is this enough?
Your cloned.git repository is a clone (copy) of report.git in the state that report.git was when you cloned or last pulled from report.git
Your cloned.git has always been a master, report.git has always been a master as well. It's the beauty of git.
git clone --bare localrepo.git newremoterepo.git
http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-clone.html
Note: Complicated technique desceibed below is required only if 'cloned' repository is working repository (i.e. non-bare repository you commit in, using separate remotes layout), and not bare (or mirror) repository. If 'cloned.git' is a bare repository it is enough to do git clone --bare (or git clone --mirror) to recover original 'report.git' repository (just like e.g. alinrus wrote).
Assuming that you used default configuration and modern Git, which means "separate remotes" layout, you would have remote-tracking branches of 'report.git' in 'remotes/origin' (or 'remotes/report') namespace.
To re-create 'report.git' repository you would have to push (or fetch) once from remote-tracking branches to ordinary branches, reverting ordinary fetch refspec (at least for branches: tags are always mirrored). So the refspec for one time push (or fetch) would be something like the following: refs/remotes/origin/*:refs/heads/* plus refs/tags/*:refs/tags/*.
Let's assume that original 'report.git' repository contains two branches: 'master' and 'next', and no tags (tags are mapped 1-1, so they shouldn't be a problem, anyway):
$ git init --bare report.git
# ...
[report.git] $ git branch -a
* master
next
Let's have 'cloned/.git' repository to be oridinary (non-bare and non-mirror) clone of 'report.git':
$ git clone [email protected]:report.git cloned
Initialized empty Git repository in /tmp/jnareb/cloned/.git/
# ...
[cloned] $ git branch -a
* master
remotes/origin/HEAD -> origin/master
remotes/origin/master
remotes/origin/next
[cloned] $ git remote show origin
* remote origin
Fetch URL: [email protected]:report.git
Push URL: [email protected]:report.git
HEAD branch: master
Remote branches:
master tracked
next tracked
Local branch configured for 'git pull':
master merges with remote master
Local ref configured for 'git push':
master pushes to master (up to date)
Of course status of your branches, and the number of your local branches might differ for your situation. This is just a simple example.
Now let's remove, or better yet rename (move aside) the original repository 'report.git', to test our recovery operation
$ mv report.git report-copy.git
Now we recovet the state of 'report.git' that it had on last fetch / pull operation in 'cloned/.git':
$ git init report.git # push won't create new repository
# move to 'cloned' repository
[cloned] $ git push [email protected]:report.git 'refs/remotes/origin/*:refs/heads/*'
Counting objects: 12, done.
Compressing objects: 100% (6/6), done.
Writing objects: 100% (12/12), 839 bytes, done.
Total 12 (delta 1), reused 0 (delta 0)
Unpacking objects: 100% (12/12), done.
warning: updating the current branch
# long warning about pushing into current branch
To [email protected]:report.git
* [new branch] origin/HEAD -> HEAD
* [new branch] origin/master -> master
* [new branch] origin/next -> next
Now you can compare 'report.git' and 'report-copy.git' if there are identical. If 'report.git' was non-bare they might differ, because push would not update working directory (and you would need to do git reset --hard HEAD or git checkout in 'report.git' yourself), but it is a bare repository, isn't it?
HTH (hope that helps).