How to clone a git repo with all branches and tags from refs/remotes?

Question

I have a local git repo that I created from an svn repo:

$ git svn clone -s svn:...

I then created a backup remote and pushed everything to it:

$ git remote add backup git@myhost:mybackup.git
$ git push --mirror backup

Now, when I try to clone from my backup, it is missing all svn tags and branches.

$ git clone git@myhost:mybackup.git
$ cd mybackup
$ git branch -a
* master
  origin
  remotes/origin/HEAD -> origin/master
  remotes/origin/master

How do I clone the repo with all tags and branches?

The only way I have found is to mirror the repo:

$ git clone --mirror git@myhost:mybackup.git

This creates a local mybackup.git directory, which knows about all tags/branches (I can use tab completion to get the entire list) but it is not a valid usable repo:

$ git checkout mytag
fatal: This operation must be run in a work tree

There must be command line option to truly clone the repo with all branches/tags???

I have found several related questions here but none of the answers work for this situation. I assume the difference is that my clone was created with --mirror?

Answer 1

There are two ways to improve your command git clone --mirror git@myhost:mybackup.git The one I found is this one, knowing that your command created a mybackup.git directory :

mkdir mybackup
mv mybackup.git mybackup/.git
cd mybackup
git init

There, you have a full working directory.

Alternatively as you can read on this page : https://git.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Git_FAQ#How_do_I_clone_a_repository_with_all_remotely_tracked_branches.3F

git clone --mirror git@myhost:mybackup.git mybackup/.git
cd mybackup
git config --bool core.bare false

I think both are equivalent up to the last line, and probably the command git config --bool core.bare false is cleaner than doing a git init.

It all sums up to the fact that --mirror creates a bare repository and not a working repository, so you need to transform it into a working repository.