git: make copy without forking

Making a copy of one repo from another without forking

This page describes the typical workflow that is used with git.

The short version (just an example)

1. Create a new repo that contains just a README.md, clone it and cd into it. In this case, that repo is called ucsb-cs-course-repos.github.io

2. Add the other repo as a “remote”. Here is an example of that command. In this case the cs32 as the first parameter to git remote add is just an identifier (we could have used potato or thingy or x. The second parameters is the git url of the repo we are copying from.

   git remote add cs32 git@github.com:ucsb-cs32/ucsb-cs32.github.io.git
   

3. Do a git pull with the special flag --allow-unrelated-histories.

   If that flag produces an error message, you have an older version of git that does not treat merging repos with unrelated histories as an error—in that case, just leave it off.

4. There will almost certainly be a merge conflict in the README.md. It will be trivial to resolve it.

   It will look something like this:

   <<<<<<< HEAD
   # ucsb-cs-course-repos
   Tutorial for how to use github to maintain course materials for UCSB CS courses
   =======
   # ucsb-cs32.github.io
   website https://ucsb-cs32.github.io
   >>>>>>> 2768905e96ab7a6a2c51e458a7628a0d520c7dbe
   

   To resolve it, just edit README.md, then do:

   git add README.md
   git commit "fix merge conflict in README.md"
   git push origin master
   

5. You now have a new repo that is NOT a fork of the old one; but a copy (perhaps apart from the README.md). It has all of the commit history of the older one, but is independent of it.