Split large Git repository into many smaller ones

Question

After successfully converting an SVN repository to Git, I now have a very large Git repository that I want to break down into multiple smaller repositories and maintain history.

So, can someone help with breaking up a repo that might look like this:

MyHugeRepo/    .git/    DIR_A/    DIR_B/    DIR_1/    DIR_2/ 

Into two repositories that look like this:

MyABRepo/    .git    DIR_A/    DIR_B/  My12Repo/    .git    DIR_1/    DIR_2/ 

I've tried following directions in this previous question but it doesn't really fit when trying to put multiple directories into a separate repo (Detach (move) subdirectory into separate Git repository).

Answer 1

This will setup MyABRepo; you can do My12Repo similarly of course.

git clone MyHugeRepo/ MyABRepo.tmp/ cd MyABRepo.tmp git filter-branch --prune-empty --index-filter 'git rm --cached --ignore-unmatch DIR_1/* DIR_2/*' HEAD  

A reference to .git/refs/original/refs/heads/master remains. You can remove that up with:

cd .. git clone MyABRepo.tmp MyABRepo 

If all went well you can then remove MyABRepo.tmp.

---

If for some reason you get an error regarding .git-rewrite, you can try this:

git clone MyHugeRepo/ MyABRepo.tmp/ cd MyABRepo.tmp git filter-branch -d /tmp/git-rewrite.tmp --prune-empty --index-filter 'git rm --cached --ignore-unmatch DIR_1/* DIR_2/*' HEAD  cd .. git clone MyABRepo.tmp MyABRepo 

This will create and use /tmp/git-rewrite.tmp as a temporary directory, instead of .git-rewrite. Naturally, you can substitute any path you wish instead of /tmp/git-rewrite.tmp, so long as you have write permission, and the directory does not already exist.