Script for moving/renaming files/directories arbitrarily in whole git history of single branch, using perl expressions

README.md

Install into PATH e.g. $HOME/bin/ as "git-filter-mv" and chmod a+rx git-filter-mv

It works with any special characters in filenames like tabs and linefeeds. It works with empty commits.

Based on example from git-filter-branch manpage.

If you want to print debug messages, use STDERR e.g. print STDERR "File: $_\n";

Examples:

git filter-mv 's!^!subdir/!'

➜ moves all files to a subdirectory "subdir/" in all commits of the current branch

git filter-mv 's!^source/!src/!'

➜ moves all files in "source/" to "src/" in all commits of the current branch

git filter-mv 's!^foo/bar.txt!foo/barbar.txt!'

➜ renames foo/bar.txt to foo/barbar.txt directly below the repository root in all commits of the current branch

git filter-mv 's!(^|/)bar.txt!$1barbar.txt!'

➜ renames bar.txt to barbar.txt in any directory in all commits of the current branch

git-filter-mv.sh

#!/bin/bash

set -eo pipefail

if [ $# != 1 ]; then
    echo "usage: git ${0#*git-} <perl>"
    echo "Filter branch by transforming all paths with given perl expression"
    echo "Example: git ${0#git-} 's!^!subdir/!' # moves all files to a subdirectory"
    exit 1
fi

perl="$1"
shift

if ! git ls-files -z | perl -e 'use strict; use warnings; $/="\0"; $_=<>; '"$perl;" > /dev/null ; then
    echo 'ERROR: Given perl script broken, please correct above errors and try again'
    exit 1
fi

script='
    use strict;
    use warnings;
    sub ren {
        $_ = $_[0];
        '"$perl"';
        $_
    }
    $/="\0";
    while(<>) {
        s/\t(.*)$/"\t".ren($1)/e;
        print;
    }
'

shellquote () {
    perl -e '
        use strict;
        use warnings;
        print "'\''",$ARGV[0] =~ s/'\''/'\''\\'\'''\''/gr,"'\''";
    ' "$1"
}

git filter-branch --index-filter \
    'if git ls-files | grep -q . ; then
       git ls-files --stage -z |
           perl -e '"$(shellquote "$script")"' | tee /tmp/lada |
           GIT_INDEX_FILE=$GIT_INDEX_FILE.new git update-index -z --index-info &&
         touch "$GIT_INDEX_FILE.new" &&
         mv "$GIT_INDEX_FILE.new" "$GIT_INDEX_FILE"
     fi' \
    HEAD

Works like a charm. This was the only script that finally worked for me. I would also add --tag-name-filter cat to migrate tags and --prune-empty to the git filter-branch command