Create Git patches for two files across several renames

Question

I want to move two files from one repository to another. The files were originally added as:

1. /src/init/Price.cs
2. /tests/init/PriceTests.cs

The two files were later renamed to:

1. /src/init/PriceValue.cs
2. /tests/init/PriceValueTests.cs

And then moved to:

1. /src/moved/PriceValue.cs
2. /tests/moved/PriceValueTests.cs

I've tried to go by this description to create a set of patches for these files, but I'm unsure how to pass in the six different paths the files have existed on.

I've managed to find all the commit IDs affecting PriceValue.cs (across renames and moves), but passing those IDs to Git fails with the following error message:

$ git format-patch -o /tmp/pricevaluepatches $(git log --all dfeeb 6966b 9f882 …)
-bash: /usr/local/bin/git: Argument list too long

So, how do I create a set of patches for this that only contains the changes to the mentioned files, but contains it across one rename and one move of each file?

Answer 1

You can get the patches of a few specific files but not earlier than commit sha1 using

git format-patch sha1 -- file1 file2 ...

Any of the files can be an old file (prior to a rename) or an existing file.

If you want all commits until commit sha1 you can use

git format-patch --root sha1 -- file1 file2 ...

So in your case, all commits until now (HEAD) of your six files:

git format-patch --root HEAD -- /src/init/Price.cs /src/init/PriceValue.cs /src/moved/PriceValue.cs /src/init/PriceTests.cs /src/init/PriceValueTests.cs /src/moved/PriceValueTests.cs