How to get --detect-branches to work with git-p4?

Question

My p4 repository has a structure similar to:

//depot/project/branch1
//depot/project/branch2
//depot/project/branch3
... etc

However, when I use git-p4 to clone "project", all 3 branches are not considered as branches and all get cloned into the single master branch.

This is how I'm invoking git-p4:

git-p4 clone --detect-branches //depot/project

I was expecting git-p4 to create a git database for "project" with three branches, and the root of the project would be mapped to the portion of the path after the branch name (for example: if //depot/project/branch1 has a subdirectory called "lib" (//depot/project/branch1/lib) then my local file system should be something like /git_project/lib with 3 git branches).

Is what I'm expecting wrong? Am I invoking git-p4 incorrectly?

Answer 1

If you look at git-p4 code (also originally here), you see:

if self.detectBranches:
  branches = self.splitFilesIntoBranches(description)
  for branch in branches.keys():
    ## HACK  --hwn
    branchPrefix = self.depotPaths[0] + branch + "/"

with splitFilesIntoBranches exploring the p4 repo for branches.

So maybe git-p4 clone //depot/project@all --detect-branches would be fine (with the @all as in this SO answer, and the --detect-branches option after the repo path)?

That being said, if the script is not smart enough to manage that, may be a simpler solution is to run it 3 times, one per branch and import the result in one Git repo.