git orphan branches with same commits

Question

I want to create an orphan branch that copies all the commits across.

Basically I need to end up with master and dev, both orphans but both identical (until I make further commits).

I have created the orphan master (empty) and have the dev with all my commits. How do I copy all these commits to master?

Answer 1

(Not judgin if orphan branch is the right solution here, just trying to answer the initial question which was about duplicating history.
As nneonneo comments regular branches are probably fine )

The problem is that if the SHA1 are the same between the two branches, the second branch will always be a simple pointer to a commit of the first branch.

What could work is:

• create a clone
• on that clone, insert an empty commit as the first commit of your master branch.
  See " git: how to insert a commit as the first, shifting all the others? "
• back on your original repo, import that master branch as a new one (my favorite trick to create orphan branch, as I explain in " Backup then reset master branch with git? ".

That would looks like:

cd /original/repo
git fetch /path/to/clone master:dev

And that would create an orphan branch dev , with all the (same) commits than master (on top of an empty one)