Git repository migrated from Mercurial shows unnamed branches

Question

https://github.com/lextm/sharpsnmplib/network

This repository network graph shows lots of branches (were created in Mercurial), but none of them has a name.

Is there a way to add names?

Answer 1

git branch branch-name starting-point

or

git checkout starting-point
git branch branch-name

where starting-point is the commit ID of the latest commit in that branch. For example, git br newcompiler 5983450. (You can use gitk or tig as a more convenient way to browse the repository than GitHub's graph.)

Git tags can be created in the same way using git tag.

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Migration between VCS systems almost never gives perfect results, so before you continue working on your project, take the chance to clean up the Git repository – it's currently in a messy state; for example, even though the 6.0 tag already exists, it doesn't share any commits with the master branch, as you could see from diff -y <(git lg 40130c97) <(git lg 6.0).