Is it possible in git-tfs to add tfs branch/project as additional remote?

Question

I have to work with a messed-up TFS repository. By messed-up I mean the following:

--|- Dev branch ---------|------
  |                      |
 previous branching    new branching
 to release            to release
  |                      |
  |                      |
   -- Release branch --* --------
                       |
                 branch deletion                       

As you can see, the branching policies are a little bit questionable...

So, my TFS branch was created from Dev branch somewhere between previous branching and the new one, using quick-clone(and quick is due to other messed-up branches). Now I have to synchronize my changes between these two branches (Dev and Release) and, obviously, I cannot branch --init the Release branch.

(Attempt to clone the whole repository again with branches did not succeed because of the weirdness of the TFS repository management)

There are two options I am currently aware of:

1. Resort to TFS for merging
2. Clone an additional git repository from the Release branch and add this repository as a remote to my repository following the Dev. This will result in continuing working with GIT, but I'm not sure it is worth the effort because of additional overhead of synchronizing the new repository separately.

One other possibility I can think of is addition of the Dev branch as additional remote directly to my current repository. However, I didn't find any way to do it.

My question is whether the above is possible and, in case it isn't, are there any other sane alternatives?

Answer 1

I think that the case n°2 will work. Quickclone the dev branch in a new repository, then add this repository as a remote just the time to fetch the changeset (you could delete the repository after). Then you could Fetch and rcheckin from here.

Ps: which version do you use? The last will be better. If you did 2 'quickclone' for each of the branches, there is an option in the config file to change to better manage branches (I will try to find it's name because I didn't remember and I have not documented it :-( )

Ps2: if you didn't Fetch a merge changeset, git won't help you a lot during merges...

Ps3: There is some restrictions on doing merges with git-tfs: https://github.com/git-tfs/git-tfs/blob/master/doc/usecases/manage_tfs_branches.md#merge-2-branches-and-checkin-this-merge-in-tfs

I hope it will help...