git-dumper: dump a git repository from a website

by do son · April 21, 2022

git-dumper

A tool to dump a git repository from a website.

How does it work?

The tool will first check if a directory listing is available. If it is, then it will just recursively download the .git directory (what you would do with wget).

If directory listing is not available, it will use several methods to find as many files as possible. Step by step, git-dumper will:

Fetch all common files (.gitignore, .git/HEAD, .git/index, etc.);
Find as many refs as possible (such as refs/heads/master, refs/remotes/origin/HEAD, etc.) by analyzing .git/HEAD, .git/logs/HEAD, .git/config, .git/packed-refs and so on;
Find as many objects (sha1) as possible by analyzing .git/packed-refs, .git/index, .git/refs/* and .git/logs/*;
Fetch all objects recursively, analyzing each commits to find their parents;
Run git checkout . to recover the current working tree