How do I rename a Git repository created with gitolite?

Question

I created a Git repository using gitolite. Now I would like to rename that repository.

How can I do this?

In gitolite's readme is says that I should not work directly on the server. But I guess I have to do some work on the server in this case, right?

Answer 1

As stated in the gitolite basic-admin manual:

renaming a repo

This is similar; there's no code to do this in gitolite. What you do is:

• log on to the server, cd $REPO_BASE (default: cd ~/repositories), and

  mv old-name.git new-name.git

• back on your gitolite-admin clone, edit conf/gitolite.conf and replace all occurrences of old-name with new-name. Then add, commit, and push as usual.

The order of these 2 steps is important; do not reverse them :-)

A third step is necessary on gitolite3:

• edit file gl-conf in the repo and change the repository name to the new name

And of course, every user should update his clone configuration to point to the new repo name.

Answer 2

I'm not familiar with gitolite specifically, but one approach that might work is to create a completely new repository with the correct name, push your code up into that one, and then delete the old one.