How do I use git-tfs and idiomatic git branching against a TFS repository?

Question

How Do I Use git-tfs Idiomatically?

• The git idiom is to check out branches to the root directory of the repository. Checking out a branch will re

Answer 1

Here's one way you can do this, and still maintain some relationships between master and the branches. You'd probably want to script it. Excuse me if I use bash statements rather than windows command line for some of my examples

First clone the whole repository out, as in your first example, with branches as directories.

This moves the trunk to the root. (hopefully there are no conflicts with your branch folders)

mv trunk/*.* .

Commit your new master

git commit -a -m "refactoring master"

creating a new branch

git checkout -b feature-login

Copy the branch files over the root files

mv feature-login/*.* .

Don't need these here any longer

rm -rf [all_branch_directories]

Commit the branch

git commit -a -m "refactoring feature-login"

back to master

git checkout master

Do it all again

git checkout -b next_branch

etc. etc..

Finally at the end

git checkout master
rm -rf [all_branch_directories]
git commit -a -m "refactoring master"

It's not perfect, but you end up with all your branches cloned off master and diffed more or less appropriately. AFAIK git should be fine if you overwrite a file with another file but the contents don't change, which allows this to all work.

One downside is that you won't clear out any files in the branches that have been deleted from the trunk. This may or may not be an issue for you...