Set up git to pull and push all branches

Question

I'd like to push and pull all the branches by default, including the newly created ones.

Is there a setting that I can define for it?

Otherwise, when I add a new branch, locally and I want to pull it from the server, what is the simplest way to do it?

I created a new branch with the same name and tried to pull but it doesn't work. Asks me for all the remote config of the branch. How do I set it.

Solution 1

The simplest way is to do:

git push --all origin

This will push tags and branches.

Solution 2

With modern git you always fetch all branches (as remote-tracking branches into refs/remotes/origin/* namespace, visible with git branch -r or git remote show origin).

By default (see documentation of push.default config variable) you push matching branches, which means that first you have to do git push origin branch for git to push it always on git push.

If you want to always push all branches, you can set up push refspec. Assuming that the remote is named origin you can either use git config:

$ git config --add remote.origin.push '+refs/heads/*:refs/heads/*'
$ git config --add remote.origin.push '+refs/tags/*:refs/tags/*'

or directly edit .git/config file to have something like the following:

[remote "origin"]
        url = [email protected]:/srv/git/repo.git
        fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*
        fetch = +refs/tags/*:refs/tags/*
        push  = +refs/heads/*:refs/heads/*
        push  = +refs/tags/*:refs/tags/*

Solution 3

I had used below commands to migrate all branches to the new repository.

~$ git clone --mirror <url_of_old_repo>
~$ cd <name_of_old_repo>
~$ git remote add new-origin <url_of_new_repo>
~$ git push new-origin master
~$ git push new-origin --mirror

NOTE: I had to use second last (i.e. push master first) command while cloning a repo from Atlassian Stash to AWS CodeCommit (blank repo). I am not sure the reason, but after pushing (git push new-origin --mirror) default branch was referring to some other branch than master.

Solution 4

Including the + in the push spec is probably a bad idea, as it means that git will happily do a non-fast-forward push even without -f, and if the remote server is set up to accept those, you can lose history.

Try just this:

$ git config --add remote.origin.push 'refs/heads/*:refs/heads/*'
$ git config --add remote.origin.push 'refs/tags/*:refs/tags/*'
$ git config --add remote.origin.fetch 'refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*'
$ git config --add remote.origin.fetch 'refs/tags/*:refs/tags/*'

Solution 5

If you are moving branches to a new repo from an old one and do NOT have all the old repo branches local, you will need to track them first.

for remote in `git branch -r | grep -v '\->'`; do git branch --track $remote; done

Then add your new remote repo:

git remote add bb <path-to-new-repo>

Then you can push all using this command:

git push -u bb --all

Or you can configure the repo using the git config commands noted in the other responses here if you are not doing this one time or are only looking to move local branches.

The important point, the other responses only push all LOCAL branches. If the branches only exist on an alternate REMOTE repository they will not move without tracking them first. The for loop presented here will help with that.

View more solutions

Comments

[Ether]

You can also add the --global option to each of these to make this the global default for all your repositories.

[Ether]

It is unfortunate that the + is added automatically by git when doing git remote add.

[András Szepesházi]

Among dozens of answers that I found on SO and other places, this is the simplest way to push a newly created local branch, without touching configuration. Thanks!

[Alec]

And if you add -u once, e.g. git push --all origin -u, tracking is setup and after that you can simply use git push.

[thisgeek]

For git version 1.7.12.3 I had to use git push --tags origin to push all tags.

[Lance Cleveland]

BTW, I am using "bb" in place of "origin" here because I assume your original/old repository was named "origin" and is likely still attached to that label. "bb" is for Bitbucket, where I moved my original repo to, but you can call it something more applicable like "neworigin" if you prefer.

[Ahmed Jihad]

Also look at "--mirror" instead of "--all" this push more stuff

[Scott]

@Loda - Is "--mirror" going to do what the poster wants? We had a guy vaporize all branches on the remote repo with "--mirror" (he only had master checked out when he did "--mirror"). I suspect there's a way to fix up your refs/remote/* but didn't have time to play with it and ended up restoring from backup.

[Ahmed Jihad]

@Scott "--mirror" does more stuff than just pushing news branch. and it does it differently. (ie: force the update, delete old branch, ...). It does more than what the poster asked. Anyway, according to stackoverflow.com/q/3333102/154272 and kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-push.html, this is probably NOT the best way to go.

[Anonigan]

@Merc: git push --all origin is good for one time publishing all branches and tags, though default up till current version 'matching' semantic would mean that you would push all branches afterwards... unless you add new branch or tag. The setting to "push [...] all the branches by default" is as written.

[asmaier]

To also push the tags from 1.8.3 on you can use git push --all --follow-tags origin

[Dereckson]

You could improve the answer to add the way to reconfigure Git this way. This is useful for users having set the simple mode.

[Jack]

WARNING: If you have a bunch of LOCAL branches that you have not cleaned up (features, hotfix's) - or did not clean up properly (me), this will flood your remote. Damn. And we just did a pruning. Not sure why my local had so many branches left over.

[Matej]

It didn't push tags for me.. I had to do git push --tags origin as well

[mike]

This has changed since git 2.0. Push default is simple, not matching any more.

[jhsowter]

That didn't work for me. Ended up with all remote branches tracking the same local branch :/

[foxundermon]

λ git fetch --all origin fatal: fetch --all does not take a repository argument

[tokhi]

are you trying git fetch --all ?

[Brian Lacy]

I tried this and got an error on push: fatal: Invalid refspec ''+refs/heads/*:refs/heads/*'' (Note: I'm on git 2.0. I'm still working out how to fix this.)

[Anonigan]

@BrianLacy it looks to me like you have quotes around the refspec in the configuration. Just open config file in editor and check.

[Alessandro Fazzi]

AFAIK this shouldn't work, as per @jhsowter comment. the right command for me to track a remote branch in a newly cloned repo is git branch --track reponame origin/reponame otherwise you'll get all the remote branches tracked on the current local branch

[Minhaj]

to push all local branches, git push <remote> --all

[hasanghaforian]

Now default value for push.default is simple.

[Pelmered]

Perfect for moving a repo to another host. Thank you!

[yanzi1225627]

This is indeed only useful method. Use git push new_origin --alljust push your current local branches to new_origin, not all branches of origin.

[jmmut]

Just noting that this makes a --bare repository, which is a bit different from a regular repository, it only has the .git files, not your files. It's perfectly enough if you are not going to do work in it. See --bare and --mirror git-scm.com/docs/git-clone.

[Ivan]

On my git 1.9.5 git push --all origin does not push all tags. It pushes all branches.

[Ivan]

A separate git push --tags origin is required to push the tags. This can be verified easily as when git push --tags origin is rerun the behaviour is different, saying it is all up to date.

[wayofthefuture]

We were trying to move our repo, but only had checked out a couple of the branches. Origin had all the branches. git push --all seems to push only the local branches and not the tracking branches. So I guess you have to checkout all branches before trying to push.

[SanthoshM]

All though it only has the .git files and not the actual source code, if you perform a remote update it will re-fetch everything from the origin to the destination.

[vladkras]

this doesn't push all branches (as OP asked) but only all local branches, so for me this doesn't work cause I want to copy all branches from one repo to another via local repo, but only master (checkouted) and local branches are pushed

[brimble2010]

@vladkras what other branches would you be aiming to push other than local ones?

[brimble2010]

@vladkras sorry, I didn't read your comment correctly and now cannot edit. My response: this is because git is distributed so any commands that you issue are to interact with your local set of branches and tags. As you mentioned, you'd have to have all of the branches and tags locally for this command to work. I would say that this is not something that people would do often.

[Paul Hicks]

I changed the repo-collecting snippet to git branch -r | grep -v '\->' | sed 's/ origin\///', which gives just the remote branch name.

[Toddius Zho]

This was a lifesaver! This "master before mirror" method fixed issue with Bitbucket being the destination and believing a different branch other than "master" was the main branch.

[Nitin Kumar]

This did not work for me for some reason... Maybe because my repository was private. Anyways I found more info here: docs.github.com/en/repositories/… and used the step, which is pretty much the same and it worked. Just FYI, had made my source and target, public.