How to move some files from one git repo to another (not a clone), preserving history

This becomes simpler by using git-filter-repo.

In order to move project2/sub/dir to project1/sub/dir:

# Create a new repo containing only the subdirectory:
git clone project2 project2_clone --no-local
cd project2_clone
git filter-repo --path sub/dir

# Merge the new repo:
cd ../project1
git remote add tmp ../project2_clone/
git fetch tmp master
git merge remotes/tmp/master --allow-unrelated-histories
git remote remove tmp

To install the tool simply: pip3 install git-filter-repo (more details and options in README)

# Before: (root)
.
|-- project1
|   `-- 3
`-- project2
    |-- 1
    `-- sub
        `-- dir
            `-- 2

# After: (project1)
.
├── 3
└── sub
    └── dir
        └── 2

git subtree works intuitively and even preserves history.

Example usage: Add the git repo as a subdirectory:

git subtree add --prefix foo https://github.com/git/git.git master

Explanation:

#├── repo_bar
#│   ├── bar.txt
#└── repo_foo
#    └── foo.txt

cd repo_bar
git subtree add --prefix foo ../repo_foo master

#├── repo_bar
#│   ├── bar.txt
#│   └── foo
#│       └── foo.txt
#└── repo_foo
#    └── foo.txt

Try this

cd repo1

This will remove all the directories except the ones mentioned, preserving history only for these directories

git filter-branch --index-filter 'git rm --ignore-unmatch --cached -qr -- . && git reset -q $GIT_COMMIT -- dir1/ dir2/ dir3/ ' --prune-empty -- --all

Now you can add your new repo in your git remote and push it to that

git remote remove origin <old-repo>

git remote add origin <new-repo>

git push origin <current-branch>

add -f to overwrite

I wanted something robust and reusable (one-command-and-go + undo function) so I wrote the following bash script. Worked for me on several occasions, so I thought I'd share it here.

It is able to move an arbitrary folder /path/to/foo from repo1 into /some/other/folder/bar to repo2 (folder paths can be the same or different, distance from root folder may be different).

Since it only goes over the commits that touch the files in input folder (not over all commits of the source repo), it should be quite fast even on big source repos, if you just extract a deeply nested subfolder that was not touched in every commit.

Since what this does is to create an orphaned branch with all the old repo's history and then merge it to the HEAD, it will even work in case of file name clashes (then you'd have to resolve a merge at the end of course).

If there are no file name clashes, you just need to git commit at the end to finalize the merge.

The downside is that it will likely not follow file renames (outside of REWRITE_FROM folder) in the source repo - pull requests welcome on GitHub to accommodate for that.

GitHub link: git-move-folder-between-repos-keep-history

#!/bin/bash

# Copy a folder from one git repo to another git repo,
# preserving full history of the folder.

SRC_GIT_REPO='/d/git-experimental/your-old-webapp'
DST_GIT_REPO='/d/git-experimental/your-new-webapp'
SRC_BRANCH_NAME='master'
DST_BRANCH_NAME='import-stuff-from-old-webapp'
# Most likely you want the REWRITE_FROM and REWRITE_TO to have a trailing slash!
REWRITE_FROM='app/src/main/static/'
REWRITE_TO='app/src/main/static/'

verifyPreconditions() {
    #echo 'Checking if SRC_GIT_REPO is a git repo...' &&
      { test -d "${SRC_GIT_REPO}/.git" || { echo "Fatal: SRC_GIT_REPO is not a git repo"; exit; } } &&
    #echo 'Checking if DST_GIT_REPO is a git repo...' &&
      { test -d "${DST_GIT_REPO}/.git" || { echo "Fatal: DST_GIT_REPO is not a git repo"; exit; } } &&
    #echo 'Checking if REWRITE_FROM is not empty...' &&
      { test -n "${REWRITE_FROM}" || { echo "Fatal: REWRITE_FROM is empty"; exit; } } &&
    #echo 'Checking if REWRITE_TO is not empty...' &&
      { test -n "${REWRITE_TO}" || { echo "Fatal: REWRITE_TO is empty"; exit; } } &&
    #echo 'Checking if REWRITE_FROM folder exists in SRC_GIT_REPO' &&
      { test -d "${SRC_GIT_REPO}/${REWRITE_FROM}" || { echo "Fatal: REWRITE_FROM does not exist inside SRC_GIT_REPO"; exit; } } &&
    #echo 'Checking if SRC_GIT_REPO has a branch SRC_BRANCH_NAME' &&
      { cd "${SRC_GIT_REPO}"; git rev-parse --verify "${SRC_BRANCH_NAME}" || { echo "Fatal: SRC_BRANCH_NAME does not exist inside SRC_GIT_REPO"; exit; } } &&
    #echo 'Checking if DST_GIT_REPO has a branch DST_BRANCH_NAME' &&
      { cd "${DST_GIT_REPO}"; git rev-parse --verify "${DST_BRANCH_NAME}" || { echo "Fatal: DST_BRANCH_NAME does not exist inside DST_GIT_REPO"; exit; } } &&
    echo '[OK] All preconditions met'
}

# Import folder from one git repo to another git repo, including full history.
#
# Internally, it rewrites the history of the src repo (by creating
# a temporary orphaned branch; isolating all the files from REWRITE_FROM path
# to the root of the repo, commit by commit; and rewriting them again
# to the original path).
#
# Then it creates another temporary branch in the dest repo,
# fetches the commits from the rewritten src repo, and does a merge.
#
# Before any work is done, all the preconditions are verified: all folders
# and branches must exist (except REWRITE_TO folder in dest repo, which
# can exist, but does not have to).
#
# The code should work reasonably on repos with reasonable git history.
# I did not test pathological cases, like folder being created, deleted,
# created again etc. but probably it will work fine in that case too.
#
# In case you realize something went wrong, you should be able to reverse
# the changes by calling `undoImportFolderFromAnotherGitRepo` function.
# However, to be safe, please back up your repos just in case, before running
# the script. `git filter-branch` is a powerful but dangerous command.
importFolderFromAnotherGitRepo(){
    SED_COMMAND='s-\t\"*-\t'${REWRITE_TO}'-'

    verifyPreconditions &&
    cd "${SRC_GIT_REPO}" &&
      echo "Current working directory: ${SRC_GIT_REPO}" &&
      git checkout "${SRC_BRANCH_NAME}" &&
      echo 'Backing up current branch as FILTER_BRANCH_BACKUP' &&
      git branch -f FILTER_BRANCH_BACKUP &&
      SRC_BRANCH_NAME_EXPORTED="${SRC_BRANCH_NAME}-exported" &&
      echo "Creating temporary branch '${SRC_BRANCH_NAME_EXPORTED}'..." &&
      git checkout -b "${SRC_BRANCH_NAME_EXPORTED}" &&
      echo 'Rewriting history, step 1/2...' &&
      git filter-branch -f --prune-empty --subdirectory-filter ${REWRITE_FROM} &&
      echo 'Rewriting history, step 2/2...' &&
      git filter-branch -f --index-filter \
       "git ls-files -s | sed \"$SED_COMMAND\" |
        GIT_INDEX_FILE=\$GIT_INDEX_FILE.new git update-index --index-info &&
        mv \$GIT_INDEX_FILE.new \$GIT_INDEX_FILE" HEAD &&
    cd - &&
    cd "${DST_GIT_REPO}" &&
      echo "Current working directory: ${DST_GIT_REPO}" &&
      echo "Adding git remote pointing to SRC_GIT_REPO..." &&
      git remote add old-repo ${SRC_GIT_REPO} &&
      echo "Fetching from SRC_GIT_REPO..." &&
      git fetch old-repo "${SRC_BRANCH_NAME_EXPORTED}" &&
      echo "Checking out DST_BRANCH_NAME..." &&
      git checkout "${DST_BRANCH_NAME}" &&
      echo "Merging SRC_GIT_REPO/" &&
      git merge "old-repo/${SRC_BRANCH_NAME}-exported" --no-commit &&
    cd -
}

# If something didn't work as you'd expect, you can undo, tune the params, and try again
undoImportFolderFromAnotherGitRepo(){
  cd "${SRC_GIT_REPO}" &&
    SRC_BRANCH_NAME_EXPORTED="${SRC_BRANCH_NAME}-exported" &&
    git checkout "${SRC_BRANCH_NAME}" &&
    git branch -D "${SRC_BRANCH_NAME_EXPORTED}" &&
  cd - &&
  cd "${DST_GIT_REPO}" &&
    git remote rm old-repo &&
    git merge --abort
  cd -
}

importFolderFromAnotherGitRepo
#undoImportFolderFromAnotherGitRepo

If the paths for the files in question are the same in the two repos and you're wanting to bring over just one file or a small set of related files, one easy way to do this is to use git cherry-pick.

The first step is to bring the commits from the other repo into your own local repo using git fetch <remote-url>. This will leave FETCH_HEAD pointing to the head commit from the other repo; if you want to preserve a reference to that commit after you've done other fetches you may want to tag it with git tag other-head FETCH_HEAD.

You will then need to create an initial commit for that file (if it doesn't exist) or a commit to bring the file to a state that can be patched with the first commit from the other repo you want to bring in. You may be able to do this with a git cherry-pick <commit-0> if commit-0 introduced the files you want, or you may need to construct the commit 'by hand'. Add -n to the cherry-pick options if you need to modify the initial commit to, e.g., drop files from that commit you don't want to bring in.

After that, you can continue to git cherry-pick subsequent commits, again using -n where necessary. In the simplest case (all commits are exactly what you want and apply cleanly) you can give the full list of commits on the cherry-pick command line: git cherry-pick <commit-1> <commit-2> <commit-3> ....

The below method to migrate my GIT Stash to GitLab by maintaining all branches and preserving history.

Clone the old repository to local.

git clone --bare <STASH-URL>

Create an empty repository in GitLab.

git push --mirror <GitLab-URL>

The above I performed when we migrated our code from stash to GitLab and it worked very well.

No linux or Github commands required

1)Go to github online. 2)Go to old repository with file you would like to move. 3)Copy file contents raw. Mine was PytorchImageSegmentation.ipynb 4)Create New repository and enter it 5)Click add new file, and create new file 6)Paste contents into file 7)Give file the same extenstion as in other repo. mine was .ipynb and I kept the same title so it was PytorchImageSegmentation.ipynb in the new repo as well.

File moved. Have not tried with folders. I don't think it's possible.