Copy single branch from git repo and make it independent

Question

I have a git repo lets say "MyRepo", with following structure, branch1, branch2, tags, etc. I want to create a new git repo, "EasyStart" that has the code and history of just branch2 and I don’t want anything else like branch1, tags etc from MyRepo. And I don’t want any other links or connectivity with MyRepo. So once the EasyStart repo is setup it only has history and code of branch1 and hence forth any updates/changes done on EasyStart will not reflect in MyRepo and vice versa. How do I achieve this?

Answer 1

You can achieve this by using a temporary repo for clean up. The steps would be:

1. clone the original repository

git clone <old repo>

2. push it to a new temporary repository

git remote set-url origin <temp repo>
git remote -v
git push origin

3. delete all branches that you want (local and remote)

git fetch
git push origin --delete branch1
git branch -D branch1

4. delete all tags (local and remote)

git fetch
git push origin --delete $(git tag -l)
git tag -d $(git tag -l)

5. remove the remote and add your new (final) remote and push to it. This should give you a clean start.

git remote set-url origin <temp repo>
git remote -v
git push origin