git command to move a folder inside another

Question

I have created a folder common with a bunch of source files and folders  Now I want to move the common folder into the include folder so it looks like include common I tried these   git add include  git mv common  include  but it fails with this error  fatal  bad source  source myrepo common  destination myrepo include   I tried git mv common  include common but I get the same error   Any idea how to achieve this

User · Answer

Make sure you have added all your changes to the staging area before running

git mv oldFolderName newFoldername

git fails with error

fatal: bad source, source=oldFolderName/somepath/somefile.foo, destination=newFolderName/somepath/somefile.foo

if there are any unadded files, so I just found out.

User · Answer

I solved this on windows by doing this    Open Power shell console run dir Alt-click and drag over the file folder name column  then copy Paste to notepad   run replace with regex  replace      with git mv      1       lt New Folder Here gt    copy all text from notepad   into powershell hit enter

User · Answer

Command     git mv oldFolderName newFolderName   It usually works fine   Error  bad source      typically indicates that after last commit there were some renames in the source directory and hence git mv cannot find the expected file   The solution is simple - just commit before applying git mv

User · Answer

I had similar problem  but in folder which I wanted to move I had files which I was not tracking    let s say I had files  a file1 a untracked1 b file2 b untracked2   And I wanted to move only tracked files to subfolder subdir  so the goal was    subdir a file1 subdir a untracked1 subdir b file2 subdir b untracked2   what I had done was     I created new folder and moved all files that I was interested in moving  mkdir tmpdir  amp  amp  mv a b tmpdir checked out old files git checkout a b  created new dir and moved clean folders  without untracked files  to new subdir  mkdir subdir  amp  amp  mv a b subdir added all files from subdir  so Git could add only tracked previously files - it was somekind of git add --update with directory change trick   git add subdir  normally this would add even untracked files - this would require creating  gitignore file  git status shows now only moved files moved rest of files from tmpdir to subdir  mv tmpdir   subdir git status looks like we executed git mv

User · Answer

I had a similar problem with git mv where I wanted to move the contents of one folder into an existing folder  and ended up with this  simple  script   pushd common  for f in   git ls-files   do newdir     include   dirname  f    mkdir -p  newdir  git mv  f  newdir   basename   f    done  popd   Explanation   git ls-files  Find all files  in the common folder  checked into git newdir     include   dirname  f    mkdir -p  newdir   Make a new folder inside the include folder  with the same directory structure as common git mv  f  newdir   basename   f    Move the file into the newly created folder   The reason for doing this is that git seems to have problems moving files into existing folders  and it will also fail if you try to move a file into a non-existing folder  hence mkdir -p    The nice thing about this approach is that it only touches files that are already checked in to git  By simply using git mv to move an entire folder  and the folder contains unstaged changes  git will not know what to do       After moving the files you might want to clean the repository to remove any remaining unstaged changes - just remember to dry-run first   git clean -fd -n

User · Answer

Another way to move all files in a directory to a sub directory  keeps git history      for file in   ls   grep -v  subDir    do git mv  file subDir  done

User · Answer

One of the nicest things about git is that you don t need to track file renames explicitly  Git will figure it out by comparing the contents of the files   So  in your case  don t work so hard     mkdir include   mv common include   git rm -r common   git add include common   Running git status should show you something like this     git status   On branch master   Changes to be committed       use  git reset HEAD  lt file gt      to unstage        renamed     common file txt - gt  include common file txt

User · Answer

Another important note that I have missed  and fixed the  quot Bad Source quot  Error instantly   Just thought I will share my mistake just in case someone encounters it       Make sure the the correct path is selected in the git Console when you run the command  - git mv Source Destination  If needed  use  - cd SourceFolder  And then the mv command

User · Answer

you can use this script   git mv a folder and sub folders in windows   function Move-GitFolder       param            target           destination                Get-ChildItem  target -recurse       Where-Object        PSIsContainer         ForEach-Object             fullTargetFolder    System IO Path   GetFullPath  Join-Path  Get-Location   target            fullDestinationFolder    System IO Path   GetFullPath  Join-Path  Get-Location   destination            fileDestination      Directory FullName Replace  fullTargetFolder TrimEnd        fullDestinationFolder TrimEnd                New-Item -ItemType Directory -Force -Path  fileDestination   Out-Null           filePath   Join-Path  fileDestination    Name          git mv    FullName  filePath                   Usage Move-GitFolder  lt Target folder gt   lt Destination folder gt   the advantage of this solution over other solutions is that it move folders and files recursively in a folder and even create the folder structure if it doesn t exist

User · Answer

git mv common include  should work  From the git mv man page  git mv  -f   -n   -k   lt source gt       lt destination directory gt    In the second form  the last argument has to be an existing directory  the given sources will be moved into this directory  The index is updated after successful completion  but the change must still be committed   No  quot git add quot  should be done before the move   Note   quot git mv A B  quot   when B does not exist as a directory  should error out  but it didn t  See commit c57f628 by Matthieu Moy  moy  for Git 1 9 2 0  Q1 2014    Git used to trim the trailing slash  and make the command equivalent to  git mv file no-such-dir   which created the file no-such-dir  while the trailing slash explicitly stated that it could only be a directory   This patch skips the trailing slash removal for the destination path  The path with its trailing slash is passed to rename 2   which errors out with the appropriate message     git mv file no-such-dir  fatal  renaming  file  failed  Not a directory

User · Answer

I m sorry I don t have enough reputation to comment the  answer  of  Andres Jaan Tack    I think my messege will be deleted    But I just want to warn  lurscher  and others who got the same error  be carefull doing    mkdir include   mv common include   git rm -r common   git add include common   It may cause you will not see the git history of your project in new folder   I tryed    git mv oldFolderName newFolderName   got  fatal  bad source  source oldFolderName somepath   init   py  dest ination ESWProj Base ESWProj DebugControlsMenu somepath   init   py   I did  git rm -r oldFolderName   and  git add newFolderName   and I don t see old git history in my project  At least my project is not lost  Now I have my project in newFolderName  but without the history    Just want to warn  be carefull using advice of  Andres Jaan Tack   if you dont want to lose your git hsitory

[git] git command to move a folder inside another

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