How to unpack packed-refs?

Question

I cloned a project from github with git clone --mirror. That left me with a repository with a packed-refs file, a .pack and an .idx file.

Answer 1

Yet another answer to your question 1:

I assume you already used a loop like this to use git unpack-objects:

 mkdir CLONE
 mv .git/objects/pack/* CLONE/
 for pack in CLONE/*.pack; do
    git unpack-objects < $pack
 done
 rm -rf CLONE/

which unpacks all objects, but leaves the packed branch heads in the file .git/packed-refs

Thanks to Clee's answer, which I reused here, I found that the following commands will be needed to unpack the branch heads, and clean up:

(
   IFS=$'\n'; # set the input field separator to new line
   for f in $(git show-ref --heads); do
      ref_hash="$(echo $f | cut -c1-40)"
      ref_label="$(echo $f | cut -c42-)"
      echo " unpack: $ref_hash $ref_label"
      echo "$ref_hash" > ".git/$ref_label";
      sed -i "s~^${ref_hash} ${ref_label}\$~~" .git/packed-refs
      sed -i '/^$/d'                           .git/packed-refs
   done
   rm .git/info/refs
   rm .git/objects/info/packs
)

Note the difference to Clee's answer:

A) the packed refs are removed from the .git/packed-refs file, and

B) the files .git/info/refs and .git/objects/info/packs are deleted.

I admit that it might not be a good idea to delete files just like that in the .git folder, however this is what I needed to do in order to do a clean unpack.

Question 2 is still not answered though.