co-location after the fact

[sullyj3]

If I forget to init with --git-repo=., or clone with --colocate, is there a way to convert to a colocated repo? I tested just moving .jj/repo/store/git to .git in a duplicate of my repo but it broke.

[ilyagr]

I would try jj git clone --colocate repo/.jj/store/git new_repo. Or just git clone and then jj init --git-repo=.. This will lose all of your change ids, you might as well clone from the remote.

[martinvonz]

You can move .jj/repo/store/git to .git and also run echo -n ../../../.git > .jj/repo/store/git_target to tell the git commit backend where to find the git repo.

[yuja]

You'll probably need to fix up .git/config to turn off the bare flag.
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10637378/how-do-i-convert-a-bare-git-repository-into-a-normal-one-in-place

[sullyj3]

Comparing with another normal git repo, there seem to be some missing files. my-project is the one I'm trying to convert to colocated:

⮞ diff (ls -1 dev/jj/.git | psub) (ls -1 dev/my-project/.git | psub)
1d0
< branches
7d5
< index
9d6
< logs
11d7
< packed-refs

[sullyj3]

Ahh, so it's bare. Yup I think just re-cloning is the easiest method for now.

[Zambito1]

The documentation says to provide feedback when doing this, so I will do that here. I ran this while I was on an empty change on my dev branch, and I ended up on a new change on master, with all of the changes added to dev since the last merge. It took me a second to orient myself with jj op log and jj log --at-operation to figure out where I was before doing this. All I had to do was jj rebase -r @ -d dev and then I was good to go, but it was confusing for a moment.

[martinvonz]

I suspect it might have helped to run jj git export before the other steps there. Once we add a command for this operation, we should make sure to include that step. Thanks for the report.

[necauqua]

I think this operation (colocation after the fact) should be a jj command, now with colocation being promoted as very usable and with this being brought up more than once.

At the very least the steps to do it manually should be in the docs somewhere.

[andrewaylett]

Having just gone through the steps, with an empty working commit:

jj git export
mv .jj/repo/store/git ./.git
echo -n ../../../.git > .jj/repo/store/git_target
git config --local --bool core.bare false
jj new @-

This left me with a (different) empty working commit, and git status having the same view of the working copy as jj status.

[yuja]

Can you try the documented steps, which is slightly updated? I have no idea if that matters, though.
https://jj-vcs.github.io/jj/latest/git-compatibility/#converting-a-repo-into-a-co-located-repo