Unable to push "git-tfs" cloned code to remote origin

Question

I have to migrate the code from TFS to Azure DevOpsService Git repository. For that, I am using "git-tfs". The cloning of tfs code using "tfs-git" is ok. However, when I tried to push the code to remote origin, I am facing the issue. I tried the following approaches -

1. In an empty folder, I did git init, then git clone <remote Git>. After that, I ran git tfs clone <TFS-url> <TFS folder. I removed the traces of "Config" and "Description" files inside .git/ repository (just removed the references of . When I tried to push the code by executing git remote add origin <remote Git Url> and git push –u origin –-all, I got the error like Outer clone contains inned clone. Do you want to create submodule? I can understand that because in the folder, cloned from TFS, there is already a '.git' folder. Instead of that, I tried normal git add ., git commit and git push, I got the response as "everything is up-to-date" but nothing is really pushed to remote origin.
2. Second, I tried with another empty folder. I did git init but did not clone from the remote origin. Then I cloned the TFS code from TFS server using "git-tfs". This time, there was no 'outer clone', so I thought everything would be smooth. However, as I did git init, so there was a .git folder already created. Again, I got the same error.
3. I tried again by taking a fresh directory. I did not do git init. I even cloned the TFS code in a different directory and then copied to the empty directory. After setting the origin, when I executed git push –u origin –-all, I got the message that Updates were rejected because the tip of your current branch is behind. Use git pull before pushing again. When I tried get pull, I got the message, fatal:regusing to merge unrelated histories. How to fix the issue ?

Answer 1

I recommend you follow https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/repos/git/import-from-tfvc?view=azure-devops

This will allow you to keep history from your TFSVC repo in your new git repo.

Answer 2

As you mentioned, the problem is that there is already a '.git' folder in the repository. There's a config file in the '.git' folder which defines the version control information (includes the original remote repo there) initialized by the git-tfs tool.

So, we need to remove the original remote repo and other git-tfs settings from the config file first, then run git remote add origin <remote Git Url> to set the new git remote.

Try to follow below steps to do that:

1. Create a directory where TFS code to be migrated to (git-tfs-demo-repo in below sample).

2. Open terminal in administrative privilege and cd to the newly created directory in terminal.

3. Run below command to clone the TFS repo

   git tfs clone https://{server-Name}/{Collection} $/ProjectName/xx

   A new repo is created in the directory (TFVC repo for example here).

4. Open config file with any text editor from directory .git of newly created repository directory. The original config file should like this:

   

5. Remove all sections except the [core] section from the config file, then save it. So, the config file would look like this:

   

6. Run below commands to set git remote and push to remote repo.

   git remote add origin <remote Git Url>

   git push –u origin –-all

7. Once completed, we can see the config file changed to look like this: (version control is changed to the new remote repo)

   

Screenshot for your reference: