GitHub - Source Repository Migations

I have been looking for a way to migrate a private Git repository to GitHub without losing commit history.

Using GIT Command Line Interface

1. Create an empty GitHub repository.

2. Clone the remote repository with the --bare option to obtain the clone with no working directory.

    git clone --bare https://<GIT_SERVER_FQDN>/<USER_NAME>/<REPO_NAME>.git
   

   The -- bare option represents that a repository will be cloned with the project’s history, which can be pushed and pulled from but not directly modified.

3. Push the locally cloned repository to GitHub using the --mirror option.

    cd <REPO_NAME>.git
    git push --mirror https://github.com/<USER_NAME>/<REPO_NAME>.git
   

   This ensures that all the references to the cloned repository, such as branches and tags, are pushed.

Using Shell Script

In order to facilitate any future needs of going through similar migrations I wrote a trivial shell script which bundles all the commands in the GIT CLI together into a single executable script.

#!/bin/bash

read -p "Enter your orginial Git repository URL : " repo
read -p "Enter target GitHub repository URL : " newrepo

IFS='/' 
read -a array <<< "$repo"

reponame = ${array[1]}

git clone --bare $repo

cd $reponame

echo $reponame

git push --mirror $newrepo

cd ..
rm -rf $repo

echo "Done!"