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Last active March 14, 2017 03:58
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How to filter git folders
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filter-git-folders.md

How to Filter Folders in a Git Repository

The following steps can be followed for filtering a set of folders found in a git repository. It would preseve the given folders and their commits and remove everything else from the repository. This would be useful for moving a collection of folders from one git repository to another with their commit history.

  1. Take a copy of the source git repository

    cp -r [source-repository-folder] source-repository-copy

  2. Remove remotes from the copy to make sure not to ovewrite the source git repositories:

    cd source-repository-copy
git remote rm origin
git remote rm upstream # ignore if an upstream does not exist

  3. Filter folders path/to/folder1 and path/to/folder2:

    git filter-branch -f --index-filter 'git rm --cached -qr --ignore-unmatch -- . && git reset -q $GIT_COMMIT -- path/to/folder1 path/to/folder2' --prune-empty -- --all
git clean -fd

Now execute a git log command and a tree command and verify the result. If everything went well, the source-repository-copy folder should only contain path/to/folder1, path/to/folder2 and their commits.

References

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