Is it possible to move rename files in Git and maintain their history

Question

I would like to rename move a project subtree in Git moving it from   project xyz   to    components xyz   If I use a plain git mv project components  then all the commit history for the xyz project gets lost  Is there a way to move this such that the history is maintained

User · Answer

Simply move the file and stage with   git add     Before commit you can check the status   git status   That will show   Changes to be committed     use  git restore --staged  lt file gt      to unstage          renamed     old-folder file txt - gt  new-folder file txt   I tested with Git version 2 26 1   Extracted from GitHub Help Page

User · Answer

It is possible to rename a file and keep the history intact  although it causes the file to be renamed throughout the entire history of the repository  This is probably only for the obsessive git-log-lovers  and has some serious implications  including these    You could be rewriting a shared history  which is the most important DON T while using Git  If someone else has cloned the repository  you ll break it doing this  They will have to re-clone to avoid headaches  This might be OK if the rename is important enough  but you ll need to consider this carefully -- you might end up upsetting an entire opensource community  If you ve referenced the file using it s old name earlier in the repository history  you re effectively breaking earlier versions  To remedy this  you ll have to do a bit more hoop jumping  It s not impossible  just tedious and possibly not worth it    Now  since you re still with me  you re a probably solo developer renaming a completely isolated file  Let s move a file using filter-tree   Assume you re going to move a file old into a folder dir and give it the name new  This could be done with git mv old dir new  amp  amp  git add -u dir new  but that breaks history   Instead   git filter-branch --tree-filter  if   -f old    then mkdir dir  amp  amp  mv old dir new  fi  HEAD   will redo every commit in the branch  executing the command in the ticks for each iteration  Plenty of stuff can go wrong when you do this  I normally test to see if the file is present  otherwise it s not there yet to move  and then perform the necessary steps to shoehorn the tree to my liking  Here you might sed through files to alter references to the file and so on  Knock yourself out      When completed  the file is moved and the log is intact  You feel like a ninja pirate   Also  The mkdir dir is only necessary if you move the file to a new folder  of course  The if will avoid the creation of this folder earlier in history than your file exists

User · Answer

Yes  You convert the commit history of files into email patches using git log --pretty email You reorganize these files in new directories and rename them You convert back these files  emails  to Git commits to keep the history using git am   Limitation  Tags and branches are not kept History is cut on path file rename  directory rename    Step by step explanation with examples 1  Extract history in email format Example  Extract history of file3  file4 and file5 my repo  -- dirA         -- file1         -- file2  -- dirB                    -- subdir        To be moved            -- file3     with history            -- file4              -- file5       v  -- dirC      -- file6      -- file7  Set clean the destination export historydir  tmp mail dir         Absolute path rm -rf  quot  historydir quot       Caution when cleaning the folder  Extract history of each file in email format cd my repo dirB find -name  git -prune -o -type d -o -exec bash -c  mkdir -p  quot  historydir   0     quot   amp  amp  git log --pretty email -p --stat --reverse --full-index --binary --  quot  0 quot   gt   quot  historydir  0 quot           Unfortunately option --follow or --find-copies-harder cannot be combined with --reverse  This is why history is cut when file is renamed  or when a parent directory is renamed   Temporary history in email format   tmp mail dir      -- subdir           -- file3           -- file4      -- file5  Dan Bonachea suggests to invert the loops of the git log generation command in this first step  rather than running git log once per file  run it exactly once with a list of files on the command line and generate a single unified log  This way commits that modify multiple files remain a single commit in the result  and all the new commits maintain their original relative order  Note this also requires changes in second step below when rewriting filenames in the  now unified  log   2  Reorganize file tree and update filenames Suppose you want to move these three files in this other repo  can be the same repo   my other repo  -- dirF       -- file55       -- file56  -- dirB                New tree       -- dirB1           from subdir            -- file33      from file3            -- file44      from file4       -- dirB2           new dir            -- file5      from file5  -- dirH      -- file77  Therefore reorganize your files  cd  tmp mail dir mkdir -p dirB dirB1 mv subdir file3 dirB dirB1 file33 mv subdir file4 dirB dirB1 file44 mkdir -p dirB dirB2 mv file5 dirB dirB2  Your temporary history is now   tmp mail dir      -- dirB          -- dirB1               -- file33               -- file44          -- dirB2               -- file5  Change also filenames within the history  cd  quot  historydir quot  find   -type f -exec bash -c  sed  quot   diff --git a   --- a       b s     ab           1  0 g quot  -i  quot  0 quot            3  Apply new history Your other repo is  my other repo  -- dirF       -- file55       -- file56  -- dirH      -- file77  Apply commits from temporary history files  cd my other repo find  quot  historydir quot  -type f -exec cat        git am --committer-date-is-author-date  --committer-date-is-author-date preserves the original commit time-stamps  Dan Bonachea s comment   Your other repo is now  my other repo  -- dirF       -- file55       -- file56  -- dirB       -- dirB1            -- file33            -- file44       -- dirB2            -- file5  -- dirH      -- file77  Use git status to see amount of commits ready to be pushed  -   Extra trick  Check renamed moved files within your repo To list the files having been renamed  find -name  git -prune -o -exec git log --pretty tformat    --numstat --follow          grep    gt    More customizations  You can complete the command git log using options --find-copies-harder or --reverse  You can also remove the first two columns using cut -f3- and grepping complete pattern        gt        find -name  git -prune -o -exec git log --pretty tformat    --numstat --follow --find-copies-harder --reverse          cut -f3-   grep        gt

User · Answer

Git detects renames rather than persisting the operation with the commit  so whether you use git mv or mv doesn t matter   The log command takes a --follow argument that continues history before a rename operation  i e   it searches for similar content using the heuristics   http   git-scm com docs git-log  To lookup the full history  use the following command   git log --follow   path to file

User · Answer

I make moving the files and then do  git add -A   which put in the sataging area all deleted new files  Here git realizes that the file is moved    git commit -m  my message  git push   I do not know why but this works for me

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To rename a directory or file  I don t know much about complex cases  so there might be some caveats    git filter-repo --path-rename OLD NAME NEW NAME   To rename a directory in files that mention it  it s possible to use callbacks  but I don t know how    git filter-repo --replace-text expressions txt   expressions txt is a file filled with lines like literal OLD NAME   gt NEW NAME  it s possible to use Python s RE with regex  or glob with glob     To rename a directory in messages of commits   git-filter-repo --message-callback  return message replace b OLD NAME   b NEW NAME      Python s regular expressions are also supported  but they must be written in Python  manually   If the repository is original  without remote  you will have to add --force to force a rewrite   You may want to create a backup of your repository before doing this    If you do not want to preserve refs  they will be displayed in the branch history of Git GUI   you will have to add --replace-refs delete-no-add

User · Answer

First create a standalone commit with just a rename   Then any eventual changes to the file content put in the separate commit

User · Answer

I do     git mv  old   new  git add -u  new

User · Answer

No  The short answer is NO  It is not possible to rename a file in Git and remember the history   And it is a pain  Rumor has it that git log --follow --find-copies-harder will work  but it does not work for me  even if there are zero changes to the file contents  and the moves have been made with git mv   Initially I used Eclipse to rename and update packages in one operation  which may have confused Git  But that is a very common thing to do  --follow does seem to work if only a mv is performed and then a commit and the mv is not too far   Linus says that you are supposed to understand the entire contents of a software project holistically  not needing to track individual files   Well  sadly  my small brain cannot do that  It is really annoying that so many people have mindlessly repeated the statement that Git automatically tracks moves   They have wasted my time   Git does no such thing  By design    Git does not track moves at all  My solution is to rename the files back to their original locations   Change the software to fit the source control  With Git you just seem to need to  quot git quot  it right the first time  Unfortunately  that breaks Eclipse  which seems to use --follow  git log --follow sometimes does not show the full history of files with complicated rename histories even though git log does   I do not know why    There are some too clever hacks that go back and recommit old work  but they are rather frightening  See GitHub-Gist  emiller git-mv-with-history

User · Answer

I have faced the issue  quot Renaming the folder without loosing history quot   To fix it  run    git mv oldfolder temp  amp  amp  git mv temp newfolder   git commit   git push

User · Answer

While the core of Git  the Git plumbing doesn t keep track of renames  the history you display with the Git log  porcelain  can detect them if you like   For a given git log use the -M option      git log -p -M   With a current version of Git   This works for other commands like git diff as well   There are options to make the comparisons more or less rigorous  If you rename a file without making significant changes to the file at the same time it makes it easier for Git log and friends to detect the rename  For this reason some people rename files in one commit and change them in another   There s a cost in CPU use whenever you ask Git to find where files have been renamed  so whether you use it or not  and when  is up to you   If you would like to always have your history reported with rename detection in a particular repository you can use      git config diff renames 1   Files moving from one directory to another is detected  Here s an example   commit c3ee8dfb01e357eba1ab18003be1490a46325992 Author  John S  Gruber  lt JohnSGruber gmail com gt  Date    Wed Feb 22 22 20 19 2017 -0500      test rename again  diff --git a yyy power py b zzz power py similarity index 100  rename from yyy power py rename to zzz power py  commit ae181377154eca800832087500c258a20c95d1c3 Author  John S  Gruber  lt JohnSGruber gmail com gt  Date    Wed Feb 22 22 19 17 2017 -0500      rename test  diff --git a power py b yyy power py similarity index 100  rename from power py rename to yyy power py   Please note that this works whenever you are using diff  not just with git log  For example     git diff HEAD c3ee8df diff --git a power py b zzz power py similarity index 100  rename from power py rename to zzz power py   As a trial I made a small change in one file in a feature branch and committed it and then in the master branch I renamed the file  committed  and then made a small change in another part of the file and committed that  When I went to feature branch and merged from master the merge renamed the file and merged the changes  Here s the output from the merge      git merge -v master  Auto-merging single  Merge made by the  recursive  strategy    one   gt  single   4        1 file changed  4 insertions      rename one   gt  single  67     The result was a working directory with the file renamed and both text changes made  So it s possible for Git to do the right thing despite the fact that it doesn t explicitly track renames   This is an late answer to an old question so the other answers may have been correct for the Git version at the time

User · Answer

I followed this multi-step process to move code to the parent directory and retained history   Step 0  Created a branch  history  from  master  for safekeeping  Step 1  Used git-filter-repo tool to rewrite history  This command below moved folder  FolderwithContentOfInterest  to one level up and modified the relevant commit history  git filter-repo --path-rename ParentFolder FolderwithContentOfInterest  FolderwithContentOfInterest  --force   Step 2  By this time the GitHub repository lost its remote repository path  Added remote reference  git remote add origin git github com MyCompany MyRepo git   Step 3  Pull information on repository  git pull   Step 4  Connect the local lost branch with the origin branch  git branch --set-upstream-to origin history history   Step 5  Address merge conflict for the folder structure if prompted  Step 6  Push    git push   Note  The modified history and moved folder appear to already be committed  enter code here  Done  Code moves to the parent   desired directory keeping history intact

User · Answer

I would like to rename move a project subtree in Git moving it from   project xyz       to       components xyz      If I use a plain git mv project components  then all the commit history for the xyz project gets lost    No  8 years later  Git 2 19  Q3 2018   because Git will detect the directory rename  and this is now better documented   See commit b00bf1c  commit 1634688  commit 0661e49  commit 4d34dff  commit 983f464  commit c840e1a  commit 9929430  27 Jun 2018   and commit d4e8062  commit 5dacd4a  25 Jun 2018  by Elijah Newren  newren    Merged by Junio C Hamano -- gitster -- in commit 0ce5a69  24 Jul 2018     That is now explained in Documentation technical directory-rename-detection txt   Example      When all of x a  x b and x c have moved to z a  z b and z c  it is likely that x d added in the meantime would also want to move to z d by   taking the hint that the entire directory  x  moved to  z     But they are many other cases  like      one side of history renames x - gt  z  and the other renames some file to   x e  causing the need for the merge to do a transitive rename    To simplify directory rename detection  those rules are enforced by Git   a couple basic rules limit when directory rename detection applies         If a given directory still exists on both sides of a merge  we do not consider it to have been renamed    If a subset of to-be-renamed files have a file or directory in the way  or would be in the way of each other    turn off  the directory rename for those specific sub-paths and report the conflict to the user    If the other side of history did a directory rename to a path that your side of history renamed away  then ignore that particular rename from the other side of history for any implicit directory renames  but warn the user        You can see a lot of tests in t t6043-merge-rename-directories sh  which also point out that         a  If renames split a directory into two or more others  the directory with the most renames   wins     b  Avoid directory-rename-detection for a path  if that path is the source of a rename on either side of a merge    c  Only apply implicit directory renames to directories if the other side   of history is the one doing the renaming

User · Answer

git log --follow  file    will show you the history through renames

[git] Is it possible to move/rename files in Git and maintain their history?

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