# importing two different trees into a fresh git repo 4 messages from 2013-02-05 to 2013-02-06. Participants: Constantine A. Murenin, Junio C Hamano, Jeff King. Thread: https://gitlist.dev/t/32836 ## Constantine A. Murenin, 2013-02-05 21:46 Subject: importing two different trees into a fresh git repo Message-ID: URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/CAPKkNb6%2Bojb%2BuvBW%2BAkhGrhjR85LrJEbmR0KmvaKYb2Cj5Aa4g%40mail.gmail.com ``` Hi, I have two distinct trees that were not managed by any RCS, and I'd like to import them into a single repository into two separate orphan branches, then make sense of what's in there, merge, and unify into 'master'. (To give some context, it's /etc/nginx config files from nginx/1.0.12 on Debian 6 and nginx/1.2.2 on OpenBSD 5.2.) I've encountered two problems so far: 0. After initialising the repository, I was unable to `git checkout --orphan Debian-6.0.4-nginx-1.0.12` -- presumably it doesn't work when the repo is empty? This sounds like a bug or an artefact of implementation. I presume this can be worked around by committing into master instead, and then doing `git checkout -b Debian-6.0.4-nginx-1.0.12`, and then force-fixing the master somehow later on. 1. After making a mistake on my first commit (my first commit into OpenBSD-5.2-nginx-1.2.2 orphan branch ended up including a directory from master by mistake), I am now unable to rebase and "fixup" the changes -- `git rebase --interactive HEAD~2` doesn't work, which, from one perspective, makes perfect sense (indeed there's no prior revision), but, from another, it's not immediately obvious how to quickly work around it. Any suggestions? It would seem like making some kind of a dummy first commit into master would be the best workaround for both of these problems. Is that basically the suggested approach? Best regards, Constantine. ``` ## Junio C Hamano, 2013-02-05 22:29 Subject: Re: importing two different trees into a fresh git repo Message-ID: <7va9riqtro.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org> URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/7va9riqtro.fsf%40alter.siamese.dyndns.org In-Reply-To: ``` "Constantine A. Murenin" writes: > I have two distinct trees that were not managed by any RCS, and I'd > like to import them into a single repository into two separate orphan > branches, then make sense of what's in there, merge, and unify into > 'master'. > > (To give some context, it's /etc/nginx config files from nginx/1.0.12 > on Debian 6 and nginx/1.2.2 on OpenBSD 5.2.) As these come from two totally separate sources, I'd find it more natural to do two repositories, deb-nginx-conf and obsd-nginx-conf, each with one commit and then pull one into the other (or pull both to master-nginx-conf if you really wanted to), to me. ``` ## Constantine A. Murenin, 2013-02-06 00:35 Subject: Re: importing two different trees into a fresh git repo Message-ID: URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/CAPKkNb494MvSETOS%2B1R%2BdbxKzcwZhbz7jEB-W%3Dz-XuLBKDJWeA%40mail.gmail.com In-Reply-To: <7va9riqtro.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org> ``` On 5 February 2013 14:29, Junio C Hamano wrote: > "Constantine A. Murenin" writes: > >> I have two distinct trees that were not managed by any RCS, and I'd >> like to import them into a single repository into two separate orphan >> branches, then make sense of what's in there, merge, and unify into >> 'master'. >> >> (To give some context, it's /etc/nginx config files from nginx/1.0.12 >> on Debian 6 and nginx/1.2.2 on OpenBSD 5.2.) > > As these come from two totally separate sources, I'd find it more > natural to do two repositories, deb-nginx-conf and obsd-nginx-conf, > each with one commit and then pull one into the other (or pull both > to master-nginx-conf if you really wanted to), to me. Yeah, I guess it might be more of a git-style to have two/three separate repositories here. (The sources are just a couple of files, so I think my specific example still calls for merely two orphan branches.) Still, is it really expected that you can't create an orphan branch in an empty repository? On the outside, this sounds like a rather benign bug. C. ``` ## Jeff King, 2013-02-06 09:07 Subject: Re: importing two different trees into a fresh git repo Message-ID: <20130206090731.GA6452@sigill.intra.peff.net> URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/20130206090731.GA6452%40sigill.intra.peff.net In-Reply-To: ``` On Tue, Feb 05, 2013 at 01:46:09PM -0800, Constantine A. Murenin wrote: > I've encountered two problems so far: > > 0. After initialising the repository, I was unable to `git checkout > --orphan Debian-6.0.4-nginx-1.0.12` -- presumably it doesn't work when > the repo is empty? This sounds like a bug or an artefact of > implementation. I presume this can be worked around by committing > into master instead, and then doing `git checkout -b > Debian-6.0.4-nginx-1.0.12`, and then force-fixing the master somehow > later on. What version of git are you using? Using both "-b" and "--orphan" from a non-existing branch used to be broken, but was fixed by abe1998 (git checkout -b: allow switching out of an unborn branch, 2012-01-30), which first appeared in git v1.7.9.2. > 1. After making a mistake on my first commit (my first commit into > OpenBSD-5.2-nginx-1.2.2 orphan branch ended up including a directory > from master by mistake), I am now unable to rebase and "fixup" the > changes -- `git rebase --interactive HEAD~2` doesn't work, which, from > one perspective, makes perfect sense (indeed there's no prior > revision), but, from another, it's not immediately obvious how to > quickly work around it. You cannot ask to rebase onto HEAD~2 because it does not exist (I'm assuming from your description that HEAD~1 is the root of your repository). But you can use the "--root" flag to ask git to rebase all the way down to the roots, like: git rebase -i --root However, note that older versions of git do not support using "--root" with "-i". The first usable version is v1.7.12. -Peff ```