Question

My repository looks like this.

v1 - A - B - C ...

where the commit v1 represents the contents of upstream-project-foo-0.9.8.tar.gz and the commits A, B … are my modifications.

The goal is to upgrade my copy of upstream-project and port the commits A, B, C … to it.

How do I get a new version of the upstream-project tarball into my git repository as another branch? Or should I consider making a second git repository?

Answer 1

create a new branch from v1 and extract the new version there.

git checkout -b upstream <v1>
tar -xzvf newversion.tar.gz
git add -A
git commit

You can then merge the changes between versions into your main branch where your updates are.

git checkout master
git merge upstream

You may also want to create a branch off of C (or whatever your latest version is) to merge the updates and then merge the third branch back into your master when you’re done.