Transferring Git Repository History Between Machines

include refs and commits reachable from those refs. You will not include other local state, such as the contents of the index, working tree, the stash, per-repository configuration, hooks, etc. You can later recover that repository by using for example linkgit:git-clone[1]: ---------------- $ git clone backup.bundle <new directory> ---------------- For the next example, assume you want to transfer the history from a repository R1 on machine A to another repository R2 on machine B. For whatever reason, direct connection between A and B is not allowed, but we can move data from A to B via some mechanism (CD, email, etc.). We want to update R2 with development made on the branch master in R1. To bootstrap the process, you can first create a bundle that does not have any prerequisites. You can use a tag to remember up to what commit you last processed, in order to make it easy to later update the other repository with an incremental bundle: ---------------- machineA$ cd R1 machineA$ git bundle create file.bundle master machineA$ git tag -f lastR2bundle master ---------------- Then you transfer file.bundle to the target machine B. Because this bundle does not require any existing object to be extracted, you can create a new repository on machine B by cloning from it: ---------------- machineB$ git clone -b master /home/me/tmp/file.bundle R2 ---------------- This will define a remote called "origin" in the resulting repository that lets you fetch and pull from the bundle. The $GIT_DIR/config file in R2 will have an entry like this: ------------------------ [remote "origin"] url = /home/me/tmp/file.bundle fetch = refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/* ------------------------ To update the resulting mine.git repository, you can fetch or pull after replacing the bundle stored at /home/me/tmp/file.bundle with incremental updates. After working some more in the original repository, you can create an incremental bundle to update the other repository: ---------------- machineA$ cd R1 machineA$ git bundle create file.bundle lastR2bundle..master machineA$ git tag -f lastR2bundle master ---------------- You then transfer the bundle to the other machine to replace /home/me/tmp/file.bundle, and pull from it. ---------------- machineB$ cd R2 machineB$ git pull ---------------- If

Git bundles can be used to transfer repository history between machines without a direct connection. A bundle can be created on the source machine, transferred to the target machine, and used to bootstrap a new repository. Incremental bundles can then be created and transferred to update the target repository. This process involves creating a bundle with no prerequisites, cloning from it, and then fetching or pulling from incremental updates to keep the target repository up-to-date.