Migrate Git Repositories to a Different Organization

 In this article, we will learn how to Migrate/Copy an existing Git repo from any source control providers (Github, Gitlab, Azure DevOps, etc..) into a new or empty existing repo.

Step 1. Clone the source repository

you can use any tool or IDE to clone your source repo. I am using the git bash tool. Run the git clone --mirror command, followed by Clone URL to clone your repo. When cloning using the mirror option, the cloned folder name includes a .git suffix.

 git clone --mirror https://[your orgname].visualstudio.com/DefaultCollection/demo/_git/MigrationDemo

cd MigrationDemo.git

once you have your cloned completed, you can verify your fetch and push origin URL end-point, run the following command

git remote -v

now its time to update your local origin by the new repo URL.

Step 2. Change the remote URL to your new project repo URL

Update your origin for new repo end-point by running the below command

git remote set-url origin https://[your new orgname].visualstudio.com/DefaultCollection/test/_git/targetMigrationDemo

To see the untracked/unsynced changes for the new repo, run the following command

git remote show origin

Step 3. Push repo to new target location

git push  origin --mirror 

The --mirror option is used with both the clone and push command. The option ensures that all branches and other attributes are replicated in the new repo. it will overwrite all branches in the target repo which includes deleting any branches, not in the source repo.

You can verify your new repo with all the commit histories and comments etc. 

Lastly, asked developers to update the source code repository link by using appropriate IDE or using below git bash command.

git remote set-url origin https://[your new orgname].visualstudio.com/DefaultCollection/test/_git/targetMigrationDemo

All Done!

There is another set of git commands to migrate the repo, run the following commands step by step to do that.

1. cd cloned_repo
2. git remote rename origin old-origin
3. git remote add origin https://[your orgname].visualstudio.com/DefaultCollection/test/_git/targetMigrationDemo
4. git push -u origin --all

5. git push -u origin --tags

Conclusion:

I hope now you have learned something about basic git commands and migration of git repo.

Happy Learning! 😊