Opposite of `git push --mirror`? How do I get my repo back?

Question

I am having great success with git push --mirror to make backup copies to a bare repo. But after search on SO and elsewhere, I cannot find a way to clone the thing locally with all branches. I do not want to use git clone since I don't want my local repo to know about the bare repo. If I use git pull it only brings down the HEAD branch.

Guessing:

git pull /data/Dropbox/backup/that_stuff.git *

gets me nowhere, of course.

How do I get the entire repo with all branches back again? I realize I could probably just copy the bare repo to my .git directory, but that seems like a bad idea.

Answer 1

Try git fetch instead of git pull

Since git pull is there to fetch a branch and merge it to a local branch, it wouldn't make alot of sense trying to merge all remote branches to a local branches.

$ git fetch a-repo_url

The above command copies all branches from the remote refs/heads/ namespace and stores them to the local refs/remotes/remoteRpo/ namespace, unless the branch.<name>.fetch option is used to specify a non-default refspec..
Try:

$ git fetch a-repo-url +refs/heads/*:refs/heads/*

could force fetching all heads for all branches.
See this SO question.

---

The OP yar reports:

git pull /data/Dropbox/backup/mjdj.git/ +refs/heads/*:refs/heads/*

works.

Answer 2

There's also (now?) git clone --mirror. But man says:

   --mirror
       Set up a mirror of the remote repository. This implies --bare.

https://git.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/GitFaq#How_do_I_clone_a_repository_with_all_remotely_tracked_branches.3F describes how to turn bare repo into non-bare.