Importing a non-master git branch is unobvious

[Juhani Numminen]

I would like to import branches other than HEAD from a git repository, but this seems not to be possible.

To reproduce:
1. Go to "Request code import" page for any project, e.g. for Launchpad: https://code.launchpad.net/launchpad/+new-import
2. In section Git, a label says: "The URL of the git repository. The HEAD branch will be imported."

[Jelmer Vernooij (jelmer)]

You can specify a different branch to import by adding ",branch=NAME" to the end of the URL.

This should be documented, or we could possibly have a separate field in the UI.

[Ivan Zakharyaschev (imz)]

I had such a guess (write it after a comma, perhaps in the form of a key=VALUE pair) about how to import a branch other than HEAD, based on what I've read at http://doc.bazaar.canonical.com/developers/colocated-branches.html#ui-changes .

[Ivan Zakharyaschev (imz)]

I've just tried to import a non-HEAD branch, but it doesn't work.

The example is https://code.launchpad.net/~imz/epiphany-browser/ps-memstat-data .

I've written in the Git repo URL field:

git://gitorious.org/ps-memstat/ps-memstat.git,branch=epiphany/ac100-second-longer

Here's the branch I want to import: https://gitorious.org/ps-memstat/ps-memstat/commits/epiphany/ac100-second-longer .

It has the commit with the message "Second longer run to collect stats for epiphany-browser-3.4.1-0ubuntu1 on Toshiba AC100.", but it hasn't been imported to https://code.launchpad.net/~imz/epiphany-browser/ps-memstat-data .

[Gabriel Mazetto (brodock)]

It's 2014 now, any update on this ?

[William Grant (wgrant)]

As the comments above describe, one can import a non-HEAD git branch by appending ",branch=FOO" to the URL. There's no obvious UI for it, and that's what this bug covers now.

[Darik Horn (dajhorn)]

This is a newly imported git repository on Launchpad that fails to import the desired branch for build recipes:

* https://code.launchpad.net/~zfs-native/+junk/pkg-spl-trusty

In this case, the importing URI is:

* git://github.com/zfsonlinux/pkg-spl.git,branch=master/ubuntu/trusty

But the README branch, which is the default branch at Github, is what Launchpad actually imports to BZR.

[William Grant (wgrant)]

The ,branch=FOO is an attribute of a particular path segment, so that URL requests the master branch. If you want to include a / in the branch name you need to URL-encode it (as %2F). I've fixed that import's URL.

[Assem Chelli (عاصم شلي) (assem-ch)]

I think you should update the note under the git url in "create a new branch":

"The URL of the git repository. The HEAD branch will be imported."

It's very confusing, I thought importing non-head branches is not implemented until I found the solution in this bug report.

[Khurshid Alam (khurshid-alam)]

How does it work again?

If I try to import https://github.com/GNOME/geary.git,branch=geary-0.11, but it is only importing master branch.

[William Grant (wgrant)]

https://code.launchpad.net/~khurshid-alam/geary/geary-0.11 looks fine to me. What suggests it's master?