Fully backup a git repo

Question

Is there a simple way to backup an entire git repo including all branches and tags

User · Answer

The correct answer IMO is git clone --mirror  This will fully backup your repo   Git clone mirror will clone the entire repository  notes  heads  refs  etc  and is typically used to copy an entire repository to a new git server  This will pull down an all branches and everything  the entire repository   git clone --mirror git example com your-repo git    Normally cloning a repo does not include all branches  only Master  Copying the repo folder will only  copy  the branches that have been pulled in   so by default that is Master branch only or other branches you have checked-out previously  The Git bundle command is also not what you want   The bundle command will package up everything that would normally be pushed over the wire with a git push command into a binary file that you can email to someone or put on a flash drive  then unbundle into another repository    From What  39 s the difference between git clone --mirror and git clone --bare

User · Answer

Here are two options    You can directly take a tar of the git repo directory as it has the whole bare contents of the repo on server  There is a slight possibility that somebody may be working on repo while taking backup  The following command will give you the bare clone of repo  just like it is in server   then you can take a tar of the location where you have cloned without any issue   git clone --bare  your backup local repo   new location where you want to clone

User · Answer

Expanding on some other answers  this is what I do   Setup the repo  git clone --mirror user server  url-to-repo git  Then when you want to refresh the backup  git remote update from the clone location   This backs up all branches and tags  including new ones that get added later  although it s worth noting that branches that get deleted do not get deleted from the clone  which for a backup may be a good thing    This is atomic so doesn t have the problems that a simple copy would   See http   www garron me en bits backup-git-bare-repo html

User · Answer

If it is on Github  Navigate to bitbucket and use  import repository  method to import your github repo as a private repo    If it is in bitbucket  Do the otherway around    It s a full backup but stays in the cloud which is my ideal method

User · Answer

Everything is contained in the  git directory   Just back that up along with your project as you would any file

User · Answer

git bundle   I like that method  as it results in only one file  easier to copy around  See ProGit  little bundle of joy  See also  How can I email someone a git repository    where the command  git bundle create  tmp foo-all --all   is detailed      git bundle will only package references that are shown by git show-ref  this includes heads  tags  and remote heads    It is very important that the basis used be held by the destination    It is okay to err on the side of caution  causing the bundle file to contain objects already in the destination  as these are ignored when unpacking at the destination      For using that bundle  you can clone it  specifying a non-existent folder  outside of any git repo    git clone  tmp foo-all newFolder

User · Answer

cd  path to backupdir  git clone  path to repo cd  path to repo git remote add backup  path to backupdir git push --set-upstream backup master   this creates a backup and makes the setup  so that you can do a git push to update your backup  what is probably what you want to do  Just make sure  that  path to backupdir and  path to repo are at least different hard drives  otherwise it doesn t make that much sense to do that

User · Answer

You can backup the git repo with git-copy at minimum storage size   git copy  path to project  backup project repo backup   Then you can restore your project with git clone  git clone  backup project repo backup project

User · Answer

As far as i know you can just make a copy of the directory your repo is in  that s it   cp -r project project-backup

User · Answer

Whats about just make a clone of it   git clone --mirror other repo git   Every repository is a backup of its remote

User · Answer

use git bundle  or clone  copying the git directory is not a good solution because it is not atomic   If you have a large repository that takes a long time to copy and someone pushes to your repository  it will affect your back up   Cloning or making a bundle will not have this problem

User · Answer

This thread was very helpful to get some insights how backups of git repos could be done  I think it still lacks some hints  information or conclusion to find the  correct way   tm  for oneself  Therefore sharing my thoughts here to help others and put them up for discussions to enhance them  Thanks   So starting with picking-up the original question    Goal is to get as close as possible to a  full  backup of a git repository    Then enriching it with the typical wishes and specifiying some presettings    Backup via a  hot-copy  is preferred to avoid service downtime  Shortcomings of git will be worked around by additional commands  A script should do the backup to combine the multiple steps for a single backup and to avoid human mistakes  typos  etc    Additionally a script should do the restore to adapt the dump to the target machine  e g  even the configuration of the original machine may have changed since the backup  Environment is a git server on a Linux machine with a file system that supports hardlinks    1  What is a  full  git repo backup   The point of view differs on what a  100   backup is  Here are two typical ones    1 Developer s point of view   Content References   git is a developer tool and supports this point of view via git clone --mirror and git bundle --all    2 Admin s point of view   Content files   Special case  packfile   git combines and compacts objects into packfiles during garbage collection  see git gc   git configuration   see https   git-scm com book en v2 Git-Internals-Plumbing-and-Porcelain docs  man git-config  man gitignore  git config  git description  for hooks and tools  e g  post-receive-email hook  gitolite  GitWeb  etc    git hooks   git info   repository exclude file  etc    Optional  OS configuration  file system permissions  etc     git is a developer tool and leaves this to the admin  Backup of the git configuration and OS configuration should be seen as separated from the backup of the content   2  Techniques    Cold-Copy    Stop the service to have exclusive access to its files  Downtime    Hot-Copy    Service provides a fixed state for backup purposes  On-going changes do not affect that state     3  Other topics to think about  Most of them are generic for backups    Is there enough space to hold the full backups  How many generations will be stored  Is an incremental approach wanted  How many generations will be stored and when to create a full backup again  How to verify that a backup is not corrupted after creation or over time  Does the file system support hardlinks  Put backup into a single archive file or use directory structure    4  What git provides to backup content   git gc --auto   docs  man git-gc Cleans up and compacts a repository   git bundle --all   docs  man git-bundle  man git-rev-list Atomic    Hot-Copy  Bundles are dump files and can be directly used with git  verify  clone  etc    Supports incremental extraction  Verifiable via git bundle verify   git clone --mirror   docs  man git-clone  man git-fsck  What  39 s the difference between git clone --mirror and git clone --bare Atomic    Hot-Copy  Mirrors are real git repositories  Primary intention of this command is to build a full active mirror  that periodically fetches updates from the original repository  Supports hardlinks for mirrors on same file system to avoid wasting space  Verifiable via git fsck  Mirrors can be used as a basis for a full file backup script     5  Cold-Copy  A cold-copy backup can always do a full file backup  deny all accesses to the git repos  do backup and allow accesses again    Possible Issues   May not be easy - or even possible - to deny all accesses  e g  shared access via file system  Even if the repo is on a client-only machine with a single user  then the user still may commit something during an automated backup run    Downtime may not be acceptable on server and doing a backup of multiple huge repos can take a long time   Ideas for Mitigation    Prevent direct repo access via file system in general  even if clients are on the same machine  For SSH HTTP access use git authorization managers  e g  gitolite  to dynamically manage access or modify authentication files in a scripted way  Backup repos one-by-one to reduce downtime for each repo  Deny one repo  do backup and allow access again  then continue with the next repo  Have planned maintenance schedule to avoid upset of developers  Only backup when repository has changed  Maybe very hard to implement  e g  list of objects plus having packfiles in mind  checksums of config and hooks  etc     6  Hot-Copy  File backups cannot be done with active repos due to risk of corrupted data by on-going commits  A hot-copy provides a fixed state of an active repository for backup purposes  On-going commits do not affect that copy  As listed above git s clone and bundle functionalities support this  but for a  100  admin  backup several things have to be done via additional commands    100  admin  hot-copy backup   Option 1  use git bundle --all to create full incremental dump files of content and copy backup configuration files separately  Option 2  use git clone --mirror  handle and copy configuration separately  then do full file backup of mirror    Notes  A mirror is a new repository  that is populated with the current git template on creation  Clean up configuration files and directories  then copy configuration files from original source repository  Backup script may also apply OS configuration like file permissions on the mirror  Use a filesystem that supports hardlinks and create the mirror on the same filesystem as the source repository to gain speed and reduce space consumption during backup     7  Restore   Check and adopt git configuration to target machine and latest  way of doing  philosophy  Check and adopt OS configuration to target machine and latest  way of doing  philosophy

User · Answer

Expanding on the great answers by KingCrunch and VonC  I combined them both   git clone --mirror git some origin reponame reponame git cd reponame git git bundle create reponame bundle --all   After that you have a file called reponame bundle that can be easily copied around  You can then create a new normal git repository from that using git clone reponame bundle reponame   Note that git bundle only copies commits that lead to some reference  branch or tag  in the repository  So tangling commits are not stored to the bundle

[git] Fully backup a git repo?

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