We had a number of developers working on a large website project using Git. We have a GitHub repository and then we have the website on the server, plus all the developers have their local versions.
When we finally launched the project, I got lazy (hangs head in shame) and started making changes directly to the server, without pushing them back to the Github repo. However, other people made changes to the repo, for reasons I don't quite understand, that were never pushed down to the server and are now either outdated or wrong. We have been doing this for almost seven months.
Now the server and repo are hopelessly out of sync. I would now like to get the most updated version of the site (which is the server) back up to the Git repository so we can begin another round of development. I basically want to start with a fresh copy of what is on the server.
How would you recommend I proceed? That was the first time I had used Git. It didn't seem like such a big deal at the time but now seems like it is harder to start up again than I thought.
I have looked for instructions and don't really see anything that fits. Because I am not super confident in my Git skills, I am afraid to just start trying the few ideas I did find and losing what I have on the server.
(I know I could restore from a backup if I really messed it up but would prefer not to do that as it would take the site down.)
Can I uninstall git and start again with a fresh repo? Or is there a safe way to push the current version up to the repo?
Thanks for your help.
UPDATE: I found this answer elsewhere (Replace GitHub repo while preserving issues, wiki, etc) but I am not sure how to do this:
cd into "new" repository
git remote add origin git#github.com:myusername/myrepository (replacing myusername & myrepository accordingly)
git push --force origin master
Possibly delete other remote branches and push new ones.
Not sure what they mean by "new repository"
Make a new branch and push it to GH.
Make a new branch based on the previous
branch.
Switch to the new branch (created on #2).
Delete all the files and folders on this branch repository
except the .git folder and contains
(maintain the README.md,
.gitignore and other files if you want it).
Copy all the files from the server except
.git folder.
Commit.
Switch to local Master (created on #1)
Merge this new branch with the previous one.
Solve conflicts
(I use SmartGITthat have a visual conflict solver and helps me a lot, but you can use gitdiffif you don't want a visual interface)
Commit
Push it to GH.
I hope this helps
I figured this out. What I did was:
Make a new branch on Github to effectively store a backup.
$ git add . to stage all changes
$ git commit -m "Commit message" to commit changes
$ git push --force origin master to force changes from server to remote branch master
Once I did this, there were still hundreds of files I had deleted on the server that were not reflected on the remote github.com repository. I used the following:
$ git rm $(git ls-files --deleted)
See Removing multiple files from a Git repo that have already been deleted from disk
Then repeated git commit and git push. Now my github repo matches my server exactly.
I have not yet deleted the "backup" branch I created on github but I will.
Hope that helps someone.
Related
I created my first GitHub repository using GitHub Desktop (Windows). It is a real mess with many revisions that are quite meaningless and some versions of files that I would rather were never uploaded. This was the result of a lot of experimenting to get the feel for how things would appear on GitHub. I want to get rid of all the history versions.
I am tempted to just copy my files on my drive to another folder then delete the repository folder from my drive. Also delete it from GitHub.
Then create a new repository with GitHub Desktop, perhaps with the same name or with a different name then rename it to the original. Could it be a simple as that or will GitHub still retain the files somewhere?
I haven't tried this because in my searching I keep finding all the complex steps to be performed to remove histories or remove files.
I sort of feel that what I am proposing is too simple.
Any opinions?
All of this got too confusing.
I just did what I said in the start of the thread.
It seems GitHub Desktop has some Username/Password problem and won't let me "Publish branch".
So I went to GitHub and created a new repository and uploaded all the files from my local folder.
It looks good to me.
There may be problems in the future. I guess I'll cross that bridge when (if) I come to it.
An alternative approach is to switch to command line and:
delete the .git folder in your repository
recreate it (git init .)
reset the origin remote: git remote add origin https://github.com//
Make a first commit with your current content:
git add .
git commit -m "first commit"
overwrite everything on the remote repo
git push --force -u origin master
The end result will be the same repo but with only one commit.
You can then switch back to GitHub Desktop.
From here.
First make sure you have Git for Windows installed, you are going to need to do git commands manually sooner or later.
Go to your local repository on your computer where your project is located. It's a good idea to show hidden files so you can see that you have the .git-folder and that the .gitignore-file is in place.
Go to the folder where the .git-folder is, right-click and click git bash here.
Now enter these commands:
Create Orphan Branch – Create a new orphan branch in git repository. The newly created branch will not show in ‘git branch’ command.
git checkout --orphan temp_branch
Add Files to Branch – Now add all files to newly created branch and commit them using following commands. Don't forget .gitignore!
git add .
git commit -m "the first commit"
Delete master Branch – Now you can delete the master branch from your git repository.
git branch -D master
Rename Current Branch – After deleting the master branch, let’s rename newly created branch name to master.
git branch -m master
Push Changes – You have completed the changes to your local git repository. Finally, push your changes to the remote (Github) repository forcefully.
git push -f origin master
Git overview
I am facing issues with the git checkout command. Please help.
Here is what I did.
Created a local directory. Created some files. Initiated a git repo locally.
Created a repo in bitbucket & pushed my local repo to bitbucket
Created a new branch locally, b01
Added new files to b01, committed them and successfully pushed the branch to bitbucket
Now I am trying to merge b01 with master and that is where I am facing issues. I am not able to checkout master.
Lists of commands used and the error details:
git clone [my repo]
git checkout -b b01
Hereafter I made multiple changes, including creating new files and directories, committed those changes and successfully pushed the changes on that branch to the repo. like:
git push -u origin b01
Now I am done with the changes and want to merge it to the master branch. So I do a:
git checkout master
Here is the error it throws:
fatal: cannot create directory at 'workfolder': Permission denied
Git keeps me in b01, but deletes ALL the files I had created in the branch.
So if I now do a
git status
it shows me:
On branch b01
Your branch is upto date with 'orgin/b01'
Changes not staged for commit:
(use "git add/rm .....)
deleted: new file1
deleted: new file2
<list of the new files I had added but which got deleted as a result of the command>
I am having to run a
git checkout -- .
to restore the files.
Please help.
I had a similar situation. Though it was due to me having the solution open in visual studio. Closing visual studio and doing a git reset put me into a good spot.
I.e. check to see if any processes are locking the folder/files.
As it is already said, these could happen when another process is already accessing the files, so closing any app that could potentially be using it will help, as of me Visual Code was opened and closing it did help.
I know the question is a little bit old, but as top answer suggests using --hard flag, which may not be necessary, I decided to post this.
Probable problem cause: some other process is using/locking file/folder you're trying to remove
Solution: stop this process, then try again. One way to found it is via Resource Monitor (way I've learned from here):
Open Task Manager
Navigate to Performance tab
Click Open Resource Monitor at the bottom
Navigate to CPU tab
At Associated Handles section, there's a search field - enter path to dir/file for which you're getting 'Permission denied' error
(Review and) stop any process that appeares as search result.
Just change permission to allow one or group user for this 'workedfolder' by this
sudo chmod u+w <exact_workedfolder_permission_denied>
or
sudo chown -R user_name:user_name <exact_workedfolder_permission_denied>
First, between every operation with git I would recommend doing a quick git status. I cannot tell you how many times this has saved me lots of headaches.
A couple of things I might try to shed some light on the problem(s):
You said you created directories and made lots of changes to b01, then pushed it to the origin. Look at the commit for this action `git show . Did you change permissions on the parent directory of "workfolder"? This might be of help.
Are you on windows? If you are, how deep in directory paths are you? Is the path length exceeding windows max? Reference here.
If none of these work, have you tried creating a throwaway branch off of b01, and merging "master"? This sometimes smokes out a cause.
The ugly hail-Mary. Have you tried making a copy/paste of "b01" outside the repository, rolling back to the matching last commit of "master", and then pasting the changes in the "b01" copy over master? When things are totally upside down and not making sense, sometimes it is easier to work backwards through the problem to figure out what went wrong and learn what not to do in the future.
In my case I just checked out to the offending commit using the commit hash rather than the branch name.
304/5000
The answer to that can be quite simple. Say you want to mash your branch with a master, you can do the following:
git checkout -b master-2 // from your current branch where all the changes are
git branch -D master
git branch -m master-2 master
git push origin master
Ready! Remember that this is in case you want to overwrite everything in the branch
So i have the following problem:
Back when i started programming, i FORKED a repository (using github for windows) for a browser-game. For some time now, i made stuff, did git commit and issued a pull request using the webpage.
The original author did authorize my pull request and my changes went live.
Recently, i have become an "official" author on the original repository.
So i dont want to work on my "fork" any longer but instead dev on the original.
Using github for windows, i decided to "clone" the original repo.
My github now shows my forked (AncientSion/FieryVoid) repository and the original (Aatu/FieryVoid).
Now what i would like to do is somehow "merge" my forked repo into my local clone of the original repo and from there commit to the master repo directly, that way deploying my local, not yet commited changes from my fork to the live version while at the same time getting rid of fork repository.
However, i have no idea if that works and if it does, how.
Can someone please advise ?
I don't think that the Github for Windows interface supports this, but this can definitely be done via the git bash console. This is untested, but the steps ought to be correct, since I've done something similar (identical, in fact) before. This assumes that your clone, AncientSion/FieryVoid, is up-to-date with Aatu/FieryVoid, which can be done with a pull followed by a merge, or, to avoid merge commits, with a git pull --rebase. So now you have AncientSion/FieryVoid and Aatu/FieryVoid, both present locally, with AncientSion/FieryVoid ahead of Aatu/FieryVoid by a few commits. What you need to do is pull in those commits into Aatu/FieryVoid by running the following:
cd path/to/local/clone/of/Aatu/FieryVoid
git remote add local_pull path/to/local/clone/of/AncientSion/FieryVoid
git pull local_pull master
git push origin master
Couple of assumptions:
You were working on the master branch of AncientSion/FieryVoid. If not, replace master in line 3 with your branch name.
origin is a remote that tracks the online repo Aatu/FieryVoid
I pulled fresh copy of my project from Assembla git repository and restructured the whole project at my system and deleted some of useless classes and files from the project as well.
Now when i push it back into remote repository from my eclipse it does not work because of confliction of whole structures on both sides.
Please suggest what to do to push fresh copy of project in remote git repository on assembla.
Thanks
If you go to your repo at Assembla, in setting you can allow a force push. This is considered to be a dangerous push as you are rewriting history and will cause problems if others have your repo as well.
Once you have done that you can do a force push by adding -f to your push command:
git push -f origin master
This will replace the remote side with your master - completely, no merging or conflicts.
A less destructive way to push your commits is to pull the repo first and merge in the changes from the remote. You might want to consider rebasing since you are changing the structure so much, this will apply your changes on top of the remote changes.
I have git repository on bitbucket. I use it from Eclipse for a while, but then copy Eclipse project with local git repository to another place on the filesystem and work locally for 3 weeks. I'm a newbie with git, so I just copy the project as is.
Yesterday I try to push local changes and then switch to the remote branch. Now I see in git-gui only old bitbucket commits and no new files. I search in git-gui everywhere. But the size of the repository tells me that my new files are still there (on bitbucket 16mb, locally >300mb).
git branch shows me 2 branches (master and * (no branch)) and both have bitbucket commits. I didn't make any branches, I just first cloned the repo from bitbucket, then made commits, then made some actions trying to push the copied repo and then change branch. Any idea of how can I restore my local files will be greatly appreciated!
I'm really having a hard time understanding what the exact situation is.
However, if you say all the files are still in the local repo, a simple:
git reflog
is all you need to see recent commits on all branches. Find the right commit you want to go back to, and take it from there.