How to import existing Git repository into another?

Let me use names a (in place of XXX and ZZZ) and b (in place of YYY), since that makes the description a bit easier to read.

Say you want to merge repository a into b (I'm assuming they're located alongside one another):

cd a
git filter-repo --to-subdirectory-filter a
cd ..
cd b
git remote add a ../a
git fetch a
git merge --allow-unrelated-histories a/master
git remote remove a

For this you need git-filter-repo installed (filter-branch is discouraged).

An example of merging 2 big repositories, putting one of them into a subdirectory: https://gist.github.com/x-yuri/9890ab1079cf4357d6f269d073fd9731

More on it here.

Here is the script that will work right off the bat.

#!/bin/bash -xe
# script name: merge-repo.sh
# To merge repositories into the current.
# To see the log of the new repo use 'git log --follow -- unprefixed-filename'
# So if the file is repo/test.cpp use 'git log --follow -- test.cpp'
# I'm not sure how this will work when two files have the same name.
#
# `git branch -a` will show newly created branches.
# You can delete them if you want.
merge_another() {
    repo="$1" # url of the remote repo
    rn="$2"   # new name of the repo, you can keep the same name as well.
    git remote add ${rn} ${repo}
    git fetch ${rn}
    git merge -s ours --no-commit --allow-unrelated-histories ${rn}/master
    git read-tree --prefix=${rn}/ -u ${rn}/master
    git commit -m "Imported ${rn} as a subtree."
    git pull -s subtree ${rn} master
}

merge_another $1 $2

To run the script. Go to the repo where you want the other repo to be merged, and run the script.

cd base-repo
./merge-repo.sh git@github.com:username/repo-to-be-merged.git repo-to-be-merged-new-name

Now push the changes on the master branch to remote/origin. This step may not be required depending on what you are trying to do.

git push origin master

I can suggest another solution (alternative to git-submodules) for your problem - gil (git links) tool

It allows to describe and manage complex git repositories dependencies.

Also it provides a solution to the git recursive submodules dependency problem.

Consider you have the following project dependencies: sample git repository dependency graph

Then you can define .gitlinks file with repositories relation description:

# Projects
CppBenchmark CppBenchmark https://github.com/chronoxor/CppBenchmark.git master
CppCommon CppCommon https://github.com/chronoxor/CppCommon.git master
CppLogging CppLogging https://github.com/chronoxor/CppLogging.git master

# Modules
Catch2 modules/Catch2 https://github.com/catchorg/Catch2.git master
cpp-optparse modules/cpp-optparse https://github.com/weisslj/cpp-optparse.git master
fmt modules/fmt https://github.com/fmtlib/fmt.git master
HdrHistogram modules/HdrHistogram https://github.com/HdrHistogram/HdrHistogram_c.git master
zlib modules/zlib https://github.com/madler/zlib.git master

# Scripts
build scripts/build https://github.com/chronoxor/CppBuildScripts.git master
cmake scripts/cmake https://github.com/chronoxor/CppCMakeScripts.git master

Each line describe git link in the following format:

1. Unique name of the repository
2. Relative path of the repository (started from the path of .gitlinks file)
3. Git repository which will be used in git clone command Repository branch to checkout
4. Empty line or line started with # are not parsed (treated as comment).

Finally you have to update your root sample repository:

# Clone and link all git links dependencies from .gitlinks file
gil clone
gil link

# The same result with a single command
gil update

As the result you'll clone all required projects and link them to each other in a proper way.

If you want to commit all changes in some repository with all changes in child linked repositories you can do it with a single command:

gil commit -a -m "Some big update"

Pull, push commands works in a similar way:

gil pull
gil push

Gil (git links) tool supports the following commands:

usage: gil command arguments
Supported commands:
    help - show this help
    context - command will show the current git link context of the current directory
    clone - clone all repositories that are missed in the current context
    link - link all repositories that are missed in the current context
    update - clone and link in a single operation
    pull - pull all repositories in the current directory
    push - push all repositories in the current directory
    commit - commit all repositories in the current directory

More about git recursive submodules dependency problem.

Don't have enough rep to add a comment to x-yuri's answer, but it works beautifully and preserves history. I was working with two working local repo's and received this error:

Aborting: Refusing to destructively overwrite repo history since this does not look like a fresh clone. (expected freshly packed repo) Please operate on a fresh clone instead. If you want to proceed anyway, use --force.

Rather than worry about the implications of the --force flag, I cloned the repo locally first with:

cd tempDir
git clone <location of repo to be merged> --no-local

and used this freshly cloned copy for the series of commands that x-yuri laid out. Lastly, in: git filter-repo --to-subdirectory-filter a, a is the name you are giving to the root folder for the repo that you will be importing.