# How can I create a commit without a parent? 5 messages from 2010-02-02 to 2010-02-02. Participants: Ron Garret, Junio C Hamano, Jakub Narebski, Jay Soffian. Thread: https://gitlist.dev/t/22480 ## Ron Garret, 2010-02-02 08:00 Subject: How can I create a commit without a parent? Message-ID: URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/ron1-5383E3.00002602022010%40news.gmane.org ``` SLSIA. git commit-tree insists on having at least one parent commit at the command line. From reverse-engineering it seems like I could do it by setting .git/HEAD to 'ref: refs/heads/some-nonexistent-branch' but mucking with HEAD directly like that feels kinda scary. Thanks, rg ``` ## Junio C Hamano, 2010-02-02 08:05 Subject: Re: How can I create a commit without a parent? Message-ID: <7vwryw6p16.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org> URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/7vwryw6p16.fsf%40alter.siamese.dyndns.org In-Reply-To: ``` Ron Garret writes: > git commit-tree insists on having at least one parent commit at > the command line. Incorrect. "git commit" might but "git commit-tree" does. Perhaps you are forgetting that the first object name is a tree to be wrapped. A short answer is that you don't create a root commit twice in a single repository, period. Your repository _may_ be end up with more than one root but that typically is due to you fetching unrelated histories from different repositories, each created its own root. ``` ## Ron Garret, 2010-02-02 08:19 Subject: Re: How can I create a commit without a parent? Message-ID: URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/ron1-2FA457.00192402022010%40news.gmane.org In-Reply-To: <7vwryw6p16.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org> ``` In article <7vwryw6p16.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>, Junio C Hamano wrote: > Ron Garret writes: > > > git commit-tree insists on having at least one parent commit at > > the command line. > > Incorrect. "git commit" might but "git commit-tree" does. Perhaps you > are forgetting that the first object name is a tree to be wrapped. No, I didn't forget that. I forgot to omit the -p flag. Doh! > A short answer is that you don't create a root commit twice in a single > repository, period. Why not? I could easily create an empty root commit and multiple branches off that. (Maybe that's a better way to go.) What would be the difference? rg ``` ## Jakub Narebski, 2010-02-02 15:02 Subject: Re: How can I create a commit without a parent? Message-ID: URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/m3zl3radgl.fsf%40localhost.localdomain In-Reply-To: ``` Ron Garret writes: > SLSIA. git commit-tree insists on having at least one parent commit at > the command line. From reverse-engineering it seems like I could do it > by setting .git/HEAD to 'ref: refs/heads/some-nonexistent-branch' but > mucking with HEAD directly like that feels kinda scary. You have git-symbolic-ref to set HEAD directly (don't forget to remove index). Or you can set up / initialize separate (new) repository, create commit there and then pull this new repository into current one. P.S. Creating new root (parentless) commit isn't something that you do on purpose, usually. -- Jakub Narebski Poland ShadeHawk on #git ``` ## Jay Soffian, 2010-02-02 16:40 Subject: Re: How can I create a commit without a parent? Message-ID: <76718491002020840y16d62fb5qc4f6c51602dac94f@mail.gmail.com> URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/76718491002020840y16d62fb5qc4f6c51602dac94f%40mail.gmail.com In-Reply-To: ``` On Tue, Feb 2, 2010 at 3:00 AM, Ron Garret wrote: > SLSIA.  git commit-tree insists on having at least one parent commit at > the command line.  From reverse-engineering it seems like I could do it > by setting .git/HEAD to 'ref: refs/heads/some-nonexistent-branch' but > mucking with HEAD directly like that feels kinda scary. I guess you're looking to do it with plumbing, but with porcelain the way I'd do it is: $ git init foo $ git init bar $ cd bar $ git commit --allow-empty -m "empty bar root commit" $ cd ../foo $ git commit --allow-empty -m "empty foo root commit" $ git fetch ../bar master:bar j. ```