Copy one file or directory out of a git repo as a patch

copy-git-file.sh

#!/bin/bash
#Inspired by http://blog.neutrino.es/2012/git-copy-a-file-or-directory-from-another-repository-preserving-history/
#Copy a file or directory out of a git repository, preserving history!
#Creates DESTINATIONPATH with patches that can be applied with git am
#e.g.
#0001-Add-new-theme-Gum.patch
#0002-Add-syntax-highlighting-for-Gum-theme.patch
#0003-Gum-Fix-tag-URLs-not-being-slugified-and-therefore-b.patch
#0004-Gum-Add-Disqus-support.patch
#0005-Gum-Use-article-title-as-the-title-of-the-generated-.patch
#0006-Gum-HTML-escape-tag-names-when-rendering-them.patch

#Usage: copy-git-file.sh /some/repo/interesting/thing /destination/patch/path

#todo, test $1 and $2
DESTINATIONPATH=$2
SOURCE=$1 #first arg to script, either file or dir

pushd $SOURCE
git format-patch -o $DESTINATIONPATH $(git log $SOURCE|grep ^commit|tail -1|awk '{print $2}')..HEAD $SOURCE
popd

I'm missing something here. Do you have to copy the file to the new destination first?

Doesn't work for files, fails with the message: copy-git-file.sh: line 19: pushd: /some/path/SomeFile.scala: Not a directory

I made some modifications:

1. Check if SOURCE is in fact a directory, since the documentation says it can be a file (was causing problems with pushd/popd)
2. Made SOURCE and DESTINATIONPATH play nice with paths that contain spaces.

#!/bin/bash
#Inspired by http://blog.neutrino.es/2012/git-copy-a-file-or-directory-from-another-repository-preserving-history/
#Copy a file or directory out of a git repository, preserving history!
#Creates DESTINATIONPATH with patches that can be applied with git am
#e.g.
#0001-Add-new-theme-Gum.patch
#0002-Add-syntax-highlighting-for-Gum-theme.patch
#0003-Gum-Fix-tag-URLs-not-being-slugified-and-therefore-b.patch
#0004-Gum-Add-Disqus-support.patch
#0005-Gum-Use-article-title-as-the-title-of-the-generated-.patch
#0006-Gum-HTML-escape-tag-names-when-rendering-them.patch

#Usage: copy-git-file.sh /some/repo/interesting/thing /destination/patch/path

#todo, test $1 and $2
DESTINATIONPATH="$2"
SOURCE="$1" #first arg to script, either file or dir

if [ -d "${SOURCE}" ] ; then
   pushd "$SOURCE"
fi

git format-patch -o "$DESTINATIONPATH" $(git log "$SOURCE"|grep ^commit|tail -1|awk '{print $2}')..HEAD "$SOURCE"

if [ -d "${SOURCE}" ] ; then
   popd
fi

All that being said, I had a hard time getting SourceTree to import the patch.

Please post Windows version of this script

This can be simplified:

git format-patch -o $DESTINATIONPATH $(git log $SOURCE|grep ^commit|tail -1|awk '{print $2}')..HEAD $SOURCE

can be replaced with:

git format-patch -o $DESTINATIONPATH --root $SOURCE

I further automated this in a function that handles patching and cleanup: https://github.com/CNG/dotfiles/blob/master/mods-available/git/functions/git-import

I further automated this in a function that handles patching and cleanup: https://github.com/CNG/dotfiles/blob/master/mods-available/git/functions/git-import

Sadly, this link seems broken now. Can you re-share? @CNG

Edit: Found it: https://github.com/CNG/dotfiles/blob/458fb4a92a603f9c9bbaac3111d2202711396e5f/files/zsh/config/git/functions/git-import