Working with Git Repositories

Basic Use

You can clone a Git repository from Hg by running 'hg clone <url> [dest]'. For example, if you were to run:

$ hg clone git://github.com/schacon/hg-git.git

Hg-Git would clone the repository and convert it to an Hg repository for you. There are a number of different protocols that can be used for Git repositories. Examples of Git repository URLs include:

https://github.com/schacon/hg-git.git
http://code.google.com/p/guava-libraries
ssh://git@github.com:schacon/hg-git.git
git://github.com/schacon/hg-git.git
../hg-git (local file path)

For the HTTP, HTTPS, and SSH protocols, it isn't clear based solely on the URL whether the remote repository should be treated as a Mercurial repository or a Git repository. Thus, to specify that a URL should use Git, prepend the URL with "git+". For example, an HTTPS URL would start with "git+https://". Also, note that Git doesn't require the specification of the protocol for SSH, but Mercurial does. Hg-Git automatically detects whether file paths should be treated as Git repositories by their contents.

If you are starting from an existing Hg repository, you have to set up a Git repository somewhere that you have push access to, add a path entry for it in your .hg/hgrc file, and then run 'hg push [name]' from within your repository. For example:

$ cd hg-git # (an Hg repository)
$ # edit .hg/hgrc and add the target Git URL in the paths section
$ hg push

This will convert all your Hg data into Git objects and push them to the Git server.

Pulling new revisions into a repository is the same as from any other Mercurial source. Within the earlier examples, the following commands are all equivalent:

$ hg pull
$ hg pull default
$ hg pull git://github.com/schacon/hg-git.git

Git branches are exposed in Hg as bookmarks, while Git remotes are exposed as Hg local tags. See 'hg help bookmarks' and 'hg help tags' for further information.

Finding and displaying Git revisions

For displaying the Git revision ID, Hg-Git provides a template keyword:

gitnode

String. The Git changeset identification hash, as a 40 hexadecimal digit string.

For example:

$ hg log --template='{rev}:{node|short}:{gitnode|short} {desc}\n'
$ hg log --template='hg: {node}\ngit: {gitnode}\n{date|isodate} {author}\n{desc}\n\n'

For finding changesets from Git, Hg-Git extends revsets to provide two new selectors:

fromgit

Select changesets that originate from Git. Takes no arguments.

gitnode

Select changesets that originate in a specific Git revision. Takes a revision argument.

For example:

$ hg log -r 'fromgit()'
$ hg log -r 'gitnode(84f75b909fc3)'

Revsets are accepted by several Mercurial commands for specifying revisions. See "hg help revsets" for details.