Simple mirror push

Simple mirror push — just a few commands:

1. Clone the GitHub repo as a bare clone

git clone --bare https://github.com/your-username/your-repo.git
cd your-repo.git

A bare clone captures everything — all branches, tags, and history.

2. Create a new empty repo in Azure DevOps Go to your Azure DevOps project → Repos → New repository. Leave it completely empty (no README).

3. Mirror-push to Azure

git push --mirror https://your-org@dev.azure.com/your-org/your-project/_git/your-repo

--mirror pushes all branches, tags, and refs in one shot.

4. Clean up the bare clone

cd ..
rm -rf your-repo.git

5. Re-clone fresh from Azure (optional but recommended)

git clone https://your-org@dev.azure.com/your-org/your-project/_git/your-repo

That’s it. Your Azure repo will be an exact copy of the GitHub one with full history.

A couple of things to sort out afterwards:

• Update any CI/CD pipelines that pointed to GitHub
• Let collaborators know to update their remotes: git remote set-url origin <new-azure-url>
• If you want to keep GitHub as a read-only mirror or archive, you can leave it as-is or delete/archive it

# Using subtree

Yes! git subtree is actually a great approach for this — it’s built into git (no extra tools needed) and is a bit more straightforward than filter-repo.

Extracting a subfolder using git subtree

1. In your existing monorepo, split out the subfolder into a new local branch:

   git subtree split --prefix=your/subfolder/path -b my-new-branch
   

   This creates a new branch containing only the commits that touched that subfolder, with the subfolder contents at the root.

2. Create a new empty repo in Azure DevOps (no README, no .gitignore — keep it completely empty).

3. Push the new branch to the new repo:

   git push https://your-org@dev.azure.com/your-org/new-repo/_git/new-repo my-new-branch:main
   

4. Clean up the local branch when done:

   git branch -d my-new-branch
   

Optionally remove the subfolder from the monorepo

git rm -r your/subfolder/path
git commit -m "Remove subfolder — extracted to its own repo"
git push

How it compares to filter-repo

So git subtree is more convenient for smaller repos, but if your monorepo is large or has a long history, filter-repo will be significantly faster.