Git doesn't clone all branches on subsequent clones?

Question

I have some problems with Git using cloned repositories and branches and it\'s somehow not possible for me to find an answer to this. Let me describe: we have a bare master

Answer 1

In addition to @ThiefMaster:

I like to

git clone --mirror

or

git push --mirror 

to update all (local & remote) branch refs and tags

Additional info As noted, --mirror will really replicate the repo as is, thus overwritany changes in the destination. Branches that do not exist in the source will get pruned unconditionally.

Essentially, it is like working with a remote and doing 'git remote update --prune', the difference being that the branches affected can be local branches as well as 'remote' refs[1]

@LeSpocky (and others?)

Now if changes disappear, they will never generate merge problems, so that's easy.

--mirror is named after the real-life concept, so it was designed to pave over any differences in the target. If the target is non-bare, and you had local changes committed, you can always get them back via the reflog of the target's local branch (git log -g, git reflog).

As a general safety measure you could have a hook to 'git stash save' in the target.

Keep in mind though, that --mirror was designed to, well, mirror and this question was in fact on how to replicate all branches to a bare remote. :)

[1] (the refs are there, but the remote definitions don't get copied; if you want that, do a manual copy from .git/config to .git/config on the push destination)