Detach (move) subdirectory into separate Git repository

Question

I have a Git repository which contains a number of subdirectories. Now I have found that one of the subdirectories is unrelated to the other and should be detached to a separate repository.

How can I do this while keeping the history of the files within the subdirectory?

I guess I could make a clone and remove the unwanted parts of each clone, but I suppose this would give me the complete tree when checking out an older revision etc. This might be acceptable, but I would prefer to be able to pretend that the two repositories doesn't have a shared history.

Just to make it clear, I have the following structure:

XYZ/     .git/     XY1/     ABC/     XY2/ 

But I would like this instead:

XYZ/     .git/     XY1/     XY2/ ABC/     .git/     ABC/ 

Answer 1

The Easy Way™

It turns out that this is such a common and useful practice that the overlords of Git made it really easy, but you have to have a newer version of Git (>= 1.7.11 May 2012). See the appendix for how to install the latest Git. Also, there's a real-world example in the walkthrough below.

0. Prepare the old repo

    cd <big-repo>  git subtree split -P <name-of-folder> -b <name-of-new-branch> 

Note: <name-of-folder> must NOT contain leading or trailing characters. For instance, the folder named subproject MUST be passed as subproject, NOT ./subproject/

Note for Windows users: When your folder depth is > 1, <name-of-folder> must have *nix style folder separator (/). For instance, the folder named path1\path2\subproject MUST be passed as path1/path2/subproject

1. Create the new repo

    mkdir ~/<new-repo> && cd ~/<new-repo>  git init  git pull </path/to/big-repo> <name-of-new-branch> 

2. Link the new repo to GitHub or wherever

    git remote add origin <[email protected]:user/new-repo.git>  git push -u origin master 

3. Cleanup inside <big-repo>, if desired

    git rm -rf <name-of-folder> 

Note: This leaves all the historical references in the repository. See the Appendix below if you're actually concerned about having committed a password or you need to decreasing the file size of your .git folder.

---

Walkthrough

These are the same steps as above, but following my exact steps for my repository instead of using <meta-named-things>.

Here's a project I have for implementing JavaScript browser modules in node:

tree ~/node-browser-compat  node-browser-compat ├── ArrayBuffer ├── Audio ├── Blob ├── FormData ├── atob ├── btoa ├── location └── navigator 

I want to split out a single folder, btoa, into a separate Git repository

cd ~/node-browser-compat/ git subtree split -P btoa -b btoa-only 

I now have a new branch, btoa-only, that only has commits for btoa and I want to create a new repository.

mkdir ~/btoa/ && cd ~/btoa/ git init git pull ~/node-browser-compat btoa-only 

Next, I create a new repo on GitHub or Bitbucket, or whatever and add it as the origin

git remote add origin [email protected]:node-browser-compat/btoa.git git push -u origin master 

Happy day!

Note: If you created a repo with a README.md, .gitignore and LICENSE, you will need to pull first:

git pull origin master git push origin master 

Lastly, I'll want to remove the folder from the bigger repo

git rm -rf btoa 

---

Appendix

Latest Git on macOS

To get the latest version of Git using Homebrew:

brew install git 

Latest Git on Ubuntu

sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install git git --version 

If that doesn't work (you have a very old version of Ubuntu), try

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:git-core/ppa sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install git 

If that still doesn't work, try

sudo chmod +x /usr/share/doc/git/contrib/subtree/git-subtree.sh sudo ln -s \ /usr/share/doc/git/contrib/subtree/git-subtree.sh \ /usr/lib/git-core/git-subtree 

Thanks to rui.araujo from the comments.

Clearing your history

By default removing files from Git doesn't actually remove them, it just commits that they aren't there anymore. If you want to actually remove the historical references (i.e. you committed a password), you need to do this:

git filter-branch --prune-empty --tree-filter 'rm -rf <name-of-folder>' HEAD 

After that, you can check that your file or folder no longer shows up in the Git history at all

git log -- <name-of-folder> # should show nothing 

However, you can't "push" deletes to GitHub and the like. If you try, you'll get an error and you'll have to git pull before you can git push - and then you're back to having everything in your history.

So if you want to delete history from the "origin" - meaning to delete it from GitHub, Bitbucket, etc - you'll need to delete the repo and re-push a pruned copy of the repo. But wait - there's more! - if you're really concerned about getting rid of a password or something like that you'll need to prune the backup (see below).

Making .git smaller

The aforementioned delete history command still leaves behind a bunch of backup files - because Git is all too kind in helping you to not ruin your repo by accident. It will eventually delete orphaned files over the days and months, but it leaves them there for a while in case you realize that you accidentally deleted something you didn't want to.

So if you really want to empty the trash to reduce the clone size of a repo immediately you have to do all of this really weird stuff:

rm -rf .git/refs/original/ && \ git reflog expire --all && \ git gc --aggressive --prune=now  git reflog expire --all --expire-unreachable=0 git repack -A -d git prune 

That said, I'd recommend not performing these steps unless you know that you need to - just in case you did prune the wrong subdirectory, y'know? The backup files shouldn't get cloned when you push the repo, they'll just be in your local copy.

Credit

• http://psionides.eu/2010/02/04/sharing-code-between-projects-with-git-subtree/
• Remove a directory permanently from git
• http://blogs.atlassian.com/2013/05/alternatives-to-git-submodule-git-subtree/
• How to remove unreferenced blobs from my git repo