Question

If I have an empty repository git init and I want to pull in another repository to be used only for pulling in updates how can I do this if I want the files to be in the root directory?

So,

lets say:

cd ~/repositories
mkdir newrepo
cd newrepo
git init
echo "testfile" > readme.md
git add .
git remote add <whatever>
git push -u origin master

#ok so that part works fine
#now we have our repository at <my_other_repository> that looks like
#a_root_file.ext
#directory/another_file.ext

#so now I want to run something like:
git clone <my_other_repository>

#and end up with:
#readme.md
#a_root_file.ext
#directory/another_file.ext

#if I then run
echo "edited testfile" > readme.md
git status
#I want to be told that
#untracked changes
#newfile: a_root_file.ext
#newfile: directory/another_file.ext
#modified: readme.md

#running
git commit -a -m "Some files from another repository"
git push
#should push everything up to the <whatever> repository

#then I want to be able to run
git pull <my_other_repository_name>
# and have it pull in any upstream changes

Is this something it is possible to setup?

I imagine I could work around it slightly by having a “wrapper directory”

cd ~/repositories
mkdir newrepo
cd newrepo
git init
git remote add <whatever>
mkdir wrapper #this will now be the root of my project
cd wrapper
echo "testfile" > readme.md
cd ../
git add .
git push -u origin master

I should then be able to run git clone <my_other_repository> without issue but this will only work if I only want to merge in one repository, and I am wanting to merge in several repositories and I also wonder what would be tracking the changes since there are now two repositories watching the same files, would both track them? or would <whatever> say “hey these are under this repository, so we won’t track it!”?

Answer 1

I’m not quite sure exactly what you’re asking for here, but you should be aware that you can have more than one remote. For example, you could:

git remote add another <my_other_repository>

Then, you can pull in updates using git fetch another. You can then merge in updates using:

git merge another/master

to merge updates from your other repository into your local repository.