Detach move subdirectory into separate Git repository

Question

I have a Git repository which contains a number of subdirectories  Now I have found that one of the subdirectories is unrelated to the other and should be detached to a separate repository   How can I do this while keeping the history of the files within the subdirectory   I guess I could make a clone and remove the unwanted parts of each clone  but I suppose this would give me the complete tree when checking out an older revision etc  This might be acceptable  but I would prefer to be able to pretend that the two repositories doesn t have a shared history   Just to make it clear  I have the following structure   XYZ       git      XY1      ABC      XY2    But I would like this instead   XYZ       git      XY1      XY2  ABC       git      ABC

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The Easy Way    It turns out that this is such a common and useful practice that the overlords of Git made it really easy  but you have to have a newer version of Git   gt   1 7 11 May 2012   See the appendix for how to install the latest Git  Also  there s a real-world example in the walkthrough below   Prepare the old repo  cd  lt big-repo gt   git subtree split -P  lt name-of-folder gt  -b  lt name-of-new-branch gt     Note   lt name-of-folder gt  must NOT contain leading or trailing characters   For instance  the folder named subproject MUST be passed as subproject  NOT   subproject  Note for Windows users  When your folder depth is  gt  1   lt name-of-folder gt  must have  nix style folder separator      For instance  the folder named path1 path2 subproject MUST be passed as path1 path2 subproject  Create the new repo  mkdir    lt new-repo gt   amp  amp  cd    lt new-repo gt   git init  git pull  lt  path to big-repo gt   lt name-of-new-branch gt    Link the new repo to GitHub or wherever  git remote add origin  lt git github com user new-repo git gt   git push -u origin master   Cleanup inside  lt big-repo gt   if desired  git rm -rf  lt name-of-folder gt     Note  This leaves all the historical references in the repository  See the Appendix below if you re actually concerned about having committed a password or you need to decreasing the file size of your  git folder   Walkthrough These are the same steps as above  but following my exact steps for my repository instead of using  lt meta-named-things gt   Here s a project I have for implementing JavaScript browser modules in node  tree   node-browser-compat  node-browser-compat  -- ArrayBuffer  -- Audio  -- Blob  -- FormData  -- atob  -- btoa  -- location  -- navigator  I want to split out a single folder  btoa  into a separate Git repository cd   node-browser-compat  git subtree split -P btoa -b btoa-only  I now have a new branch  btoa-only  that only has commits for btoa and I want to create a new repository  mkdir   btoa   amp  amp  cd   btoa  git init git pull   node-browser-compat btoa-only  Next  I create a new repo on GitHub or Bitbucket  or whatever and add it as the origin git remote add origin git github com node-browser-compat btoa git git push -u origin master  Happy day  Note  If you created a repo with a README md   gitignore and LICENSE  you will need to pull first  git pull origin master git push origin master  Lastly  I ll want to remove the folder from the bigger repo git rm -rf btoa   Appendix Latest Git on macOS To get the latest version of Git using Homebrew  brew install git  Latest Git on Ubuntu sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install git git --version  If that doesn t work  you have a very old version of Ubuntu   try sudo add-apt-repository ppa git-core ppa sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install git  If that still doesn t work  try sudo chmod  x  usr share doc git contrib subtree git-subtree sh sudo ln -s    usr share doc git contrib subtree git-subtree sh    usr lib git-core git-subtree  Thanks to rui araujo from the comments  Clearing your history By default removing files from Git doesn t actually remove them  it just commits that they aren t there anymore  If you want to actually remove the historical references  i e  you committed a password   you need to do this  git filter-branch --prune-empty --tree-filter  rm -rf  lt name-of-folder gt   HEAD  After that  you can check that your file or folder no longer shows up in the Git history at all git log --  lt name-of-folder gt    should show nothing  However  you can t  quot push quot  deletes to GitHub and the like  If you try  you ll get an error and you ll have to git pull before you can git push - and then you re back to having everything in your history  So if you want to delete history from the  quot origin quot  - meaning to delete it from GitHub  Bitbucket  etc - you ll need to delete the repo and re-push a pruned copy of the repo  But wait - there s more  - if you re really concerned about getting rid of a password or something like that you ll need to prune the backup  see below   Making  git smaller The aforementioned delete history command still leaves behind a bunch of backup files - because Git is all too kind in helping you to not ruin your repo by accident  It will eventually delete orphaned files over the days and months  but it leaves them there for a while in case you realize that you accidentally deleted something you didn t want to  So if you really want to empty the trash to reduce the clone size of a repo immediately you have to do all of this really weird stuff  rm -rf  git refs original   amp  amp    git reflog expire --all  amp  amp    git gc --aggressive --prune now  git reflog expire --all --expire-unreachable 0 git repack -A -d git prune  That said  I d recommend not performing these steps unless you know that you need to - just in case you did prune the wrong subdirectory  y know  The backup files shouldn t get cloned when you push the repo  they ll just be in your local copy  Credit  http   psionides eu 2010 02 04 sharing-code-between-projects-with-git-subtree  Remove a directory permanently from git http   blogs atlassian com 2013 05 alternatives-to-git-submodule-git-subtree  How to remove unreferenced blobs from my git repo

User · Answer

You can easily try the https   help github com enterprise 2 15 user articles splitting-a-subfolder-out-into-a-new-repository   This worked for me  The issues i faced in the steps given above are    in this command git filter-branch --prune-empty --subdirectory-filter FOLDER-NAME  BRANCH-NAME  The BRANCH-NAME is master if the last step fails when committing due to protection issue follow - https   docs gitlab com ee user project protected branches html

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As I mentioned above  I had to use the reverse solution  deleting all commits not touching my dir subdir targetdir  which seemed to work pretty well removing about 95  of the commits  as desired    There are  however  two small issues remaining   FIRST  filter-branch did a bang up job of removing commits which introduce or modify code but apparently  merge commits are beneath its station in the Gitiverse      Screenshot  Merge Madness    This is a cosmetic issue which I can probably live with  he says   backing away slowly with eyes averted    SECOND the few commits that remain are pretty much ALL duplicated   I seem to have acquired a second  redundant timeline that spans just about the entire history of the project   The interesting thing  which you can see from the picture below   is that my three local branches are not all on the same timeline  which is  certainly why it exists and isn t just garbage collected     Screnshot  Double-double  Git filter-branch style   The only thing I can imagine is that one of the deleted commits was  perhaps  the single merge commit that filter-branch actually did delete  and that created the parallel timeline as each now-unmerged strand took its own copy of the commits   shrug Where s my TARDiS    I m pretty sure I can fix this issue  though I d really love to understand how it happened   In the case of crazy mergefest-O-RAMA  I ll likely be leaving that one alone since it has so firmly entrenched itself in my commit history   menacing at me whenever I come near     it doesn t seem to be actually causing any non-cosmetic problems and because it is quite pretty in Tower app

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Update  This process is so common  that the git team made it much simpler with a new tool  git subtree  See here  Detach  move  subdirectory into separate Git repository    You want to clone your repository and then use git filter-branch to mark everything but the subdirectory you want in your new repo to be garbage-collected    To clone your local repository   git clone  XYZ  ABC    Note  the repository will be cloned using hard-links  but that is not a problem since the hard-linked files will not be modified in themselves - new ones will be created   Now  let us preserve the interesting branches which we want to rewrite as well  and then remove the origin to avoid pushing there and to make sure that old commits will not be referenced by the origin   cd  ABC for i in branch1 br2 br3  do git branch -t  i origin  i  done git remote rm origin   or for all remote branches   cd  ABC for i in   git branch -r   sed  s   origin        do git branch -t  i origin  i  done git remote rm origin  Now you might want to also remove tags which have no relation with the subproject  you can also do that later  but you might need to prune your repo again  I did not do so and got a WARNING  Ref  refs tags v0 1  is unchanged for all tags  since they were all unrelated to the subproject   additionally  after removing such tags more space will be reclaimed  Apparently git filter-branch should be able to rewrite other tags  but I could not verify this  If you want to remove all tags  use git tag -l   xargs git tag -d  Then use filter-branch and reset to exclude the other files  so they can be pruned  Let s also add --tag-name-filter cat --prune-empty to remove empty commits and to rewrite tags  note that this will have to strip their signature    git filter-branch --tag-name-filter cat --prune-empty --subdirectory-filter ABC -- --all   or alternatively  to only rewrite the HEAD branch and ignore tags and other branches   git filter-branch --tag-name-filter cat --prune-empty --subdirectory-filter ABC HEAD  Then delete the backup reflogs so the space can be truly reclaimed  although now the operation is destructive   git reset --hard git for-each-ref --format    refname   refs original    xargs -n 1 git update-ref -d git reflog expire --expire now --all git gc --aggressive --prune now   and now you have a local git repository of the ABC sub-directory with all its history preserved     Note  For most uses  git filter-branch should indeed have the added parameter -- --all  Yes that s really --space-- all   This needs to be the last parameters for the command  As Matli discovered  this keeps the project branches and tags included in the new repo   Edit  various suggestions from comments below were incorporated to make sure  for instance  that the repository is actually shrunk  which was not always the case before

User · Answer

This is no longer so complex you can just use the git filter-branch command on a clone of you repo to cull the subdirectories you don t want and then push to the new remote   git filter-branch --prune-empty --subdirectory-filter  lt YOUR SUBDIR TO KEEP gt  master git push  lt MY NEW REMOTE URL gt  -f

User · Answer

Update  This process is so common  that the git team made it much simpler with a new tool  git subtree  See here  Detach  move  subdirectory into separate Git repository    You want to clone your repository and then use git filter-branch to mark everything but the subdirectory you want in your new repo to be garbage-collected    To clone your local repository   git clone  XYZ  ABC    Note  the repository will be cloned using hard-links  but that is not a problem since the hard-linked files will not be modified in themselves - new ones will be created   Now  let us preserve the interesting branches which we want to rewrite as well  and then remove the origin to avoid pushing there and to make sure that old commits will not be referenced by the origin   cd  ABC for i in branch1 br2 br3  do git branch -t  i origin  i  done git remote rm origin   or for all remote branches   cd  ABC for i in   git branch -r   sed  s   origin        do git branch -t  i origin  i  done git remote rm origin  Now you might want to also remove tags which have no relation with the subproject  you can also do that later  but you might need to prune your repo again  I did not do so and got a WARNING  Ref  refs tags v0 1  is unchanged for all tags  since they were all unrelated to the subproject   additionally  after removing such tags more space will be reclaimed  Apparently git filter-branch should be able to rewrite other tags  but I could not verify this  If you want to remove all tags  use git tag -l   xargs git tag -d  Then use filter-branch and reset to exclude the other files  so they can be pruned  Let s also add --tag-name-filter cat --prune-empty to remove empty commits and to rewrite tags  note that this will have to strip their signature    git filter-branch --tag-name-filter cat --prune-empty --subdirectory-filter ABC -- --all   or alternatively  to only rewrite the HEAD branch and ignore tags and other branches   git filter-branch --tag-name-filter cat --prune-empty --subdirectory-filter ABC HEAD  Then delete the backup reflogs so the space can be truly reclaimed  although now the operation is destructive   git reset --hard git for-each-ref --format    refname   refs original    xargs -n 1 git update-ref -d git reflog expire --expire now --all git gc --aggressive --prune now   and now you have a local git repository of the ABC sub-directory with all its history preserved     Note  For most uses  git filter-branch should indeed have the added parameter -- --all  Yes that s really --space-- all   This needs to be the last parameters for the command  As Matli discovered  this keeps the project branches and tags included in the new repo   Edit  various suggestions from comments below were incorporated to make sure  for instance  that the repository is actually shrunk  which was not always the case before

User · Answer

Put this into your gitconfig   reduce-to-subfolder    sh -c  git filter-branch --tag-name-filter cat --prune-empty --subdirectory-filter cookbooks unicorn HEAD  amp  amp  git reset --hard  amp  amp  git for-each-ref refs original    cut -f 2   xargs -n 1 git update-ref -d  amp  amp  git reflog expire --expire now --all  amp  amp  git gc --aggressive --prune now  amp  amp  git remote rm origin

User · Answer

Put this into your gitconfig   reduce-to-subfolder    sh -c  git filter-branch --tag-name-filter cat --prune-empty --subdirectory-filter cookbooks unicorn HEAD  amp  amp  git reset --hard  amp  amp  git for-each-ref refs original    cut -f 2   xargs -n 1 git update-ref -d  amp  amp  git reflog expire --expire now --all  amp  amp  git gc --aggressive --prune now  amp  amp  git remote rm origin

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Here is a small modification to CoolAJ86 s  The Easy Way trade   answer in order to split multiple sub folders  let s say sub1and sub2  into a new git repository   The Easy Way trade   multiple sub folders    Prepare the old repo  pushd  lt big-repo gt  git filter-branch --tree-filter  mkdir  lt name-of-folder gt   mv  lt sub1 gt   lt sub2 gt   lt name-of-folder gt    HEAD git subtree split -P  lt name-of-folder gt  -b  lt name-of-new-branch gt  popd   Note   lt name-of-folder gt  must NOT contain leading or trailing characters   For instance  the folder named subproject MUST be passed as subproject  NOT   subproject   Note for windows users  when your folder depth is   1   lt name-of-folder gt  must have  nix style folder separator      For instance  the folder named path1 path2 subproject MUST be passed as path1 path2 subproject  Moreover don t use mvcommand but move   Final note  the unique and big difference with the base answer is the second line of the script  git filter-branch     Create the new repo  mkdir  lt new-repo gt  pushd  lt new-repo gt   git init git pull  lt  path to big-repo gt   lt name-of-new-branch gt   Link the new repo to Github or wherever  git remote add origin  lt git github com my-user new-repo git gt  git push origin -u master  Cleanup  if desired  popd   get out of  lt new-repo gt  pushd  lt big-repo gt   git rm -rf  lt name-of-folder gt    Note  This leaves all the historical references in the repository See the Appendix in the original answer if you re actually concerned about having committed a password or you need to decreasing the file size of your  git folder

User · Answer

You might need something like  git reflog expire --expire now --all  before the garbage collection to actually clean the files out  git filter-branch just removes references in the history  but doesn t remove the reflog entries that hold the data  Of course  test this first   My disk usage dropped dramatically in doing this  though my initial conditions were somewhat different  Perhaps --subdirectory-filter negates this need  but I doubt it

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For what it s worth  here is how using GitHub on a Windows machine  Let s say you have a cloned repo in residing in C  dir1  The directory structure looks like this  C  dir1 dir2 dir3  The dir3 directory is the one I want to be a new separate repo     Github    Create your new repository  MyTeam mynewrepo   Bash Prompt      cd c  Dir1   git filter-branch --prune-empty --subdirectory-filter dir2 dir3 HEAD Returned  Ref  refs heads master  was rewritten  fyi  dir2 dir3 is case sensitive     git remote add some name git github com MyTeam mynewrepo git git remote add origin etc  did not work  returned  remote origin already exists    git push --progress some name master

User · Answer

I had exactly this problem but all the standard solutions based on git filter-branch were extremely slow  If you have a small repository then this may not be a problem  it was for me  I wrote another git filtering program based on libgit2 which as a first step creates branches for each filtering of the primary repository and then pushes these to clean repositories as the next step  On my repository  500Mb 100000 commits  the standard git filter-branch methods took days  My program takes minutes to do the same filtering   It has the fabulous name of git filter and lives here    https   github com slobobaby git filter   on GitHub   I hope it is useful to someone

User · Answer

The Easy Way    It turns out that this is such a common and useful practice that the overlords of Git made it really easy  but you have to have a newer version of Git   gt   1 7 11 May 2012   See the appendix for how to install the latest Git  Also  there s a real-world example in the walkthrough below   Prepare the old repo  cd  lt big-repo gt   git subtree split -P  lt name-of-folder gt  -b  lt name-of-new-branch gt     Note   lt name-of-folder gt  must NOT contain leading or trailing characters   For instance  the folder named subproject MUST be passed as subproject  NOT   subproject  Note for Windows users  When your folder depth is  gt  1   lt name-of-folder gt  must have  nix style folder separator      For instance  the folder named path1 path2 subproject MUST be passed as path1 path2 subproject  Create the new repo  mkdir    lt new-repo gt   amp  amp  cd    lt new-repo gt   git init  git pull  lt  path to big-repo gt   lt name-of-new-branch gt    Link the new repo to GitHub or wherever  git remote add origin  lt git github com user new-repo git gt   git push -u origin master   Cleanup inside  lt big-repo gt   if desired  git rm -rf  lt name-of-folder gt     Note  This leaves all the historical references in the repository  See the Appendix below if you re actually concerned about having committed a password or you need to decreasing the file size of your  git folder   Walkthrough These are the same steps as above  but following my exact steps for my repository instead of using  lt meta-named-things gt   Here s a project I have for implementing JavaScript browser modules in node  tree   node-browser-compat  node-browser-compat  -- ArrayBuffer  -- Audio  -- Blob  -- FormData  -- atob  -- btoa  -- location  -- navigator  I want to split out a single folder  btoa  into a separate Git repository cd   node-browser-compat  git subtree split -P btoa -b btoa-only  I now have a new branch  btoa-only  that only has commits for btoa and I want to create a new repository  mkdir   btoa   amp  amp  cd   btoa  git init git pull   node-browser-compat btoa-only  Next  I create a new repo on GitHub or Bitbucket  or whatever and add it as the origin git remote add origin git github com node-browser-compat btoa git git push -u origin master  Happy day  Note  If you created a repo with a README md   gitignore and LICENSE  you will need to pull first  git pull origin master git push origin master  Lastly  I ll want to remove the folder from the bigger repo git rm -rf btoa   Appendix Latest Git on macOS To get the latest version of Git using Homebrew  brew install git  Latest Git on Ubuntu sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install git git --version  If that doesn t work  you have a very old version of Ubuntu   try sudo add-apt-repository ppa git-core ppa sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install git  If that still doesn t work  try sudo chmod  x  usr share doc git contrib subtree git-subtree sh sudo ln -s    usr share doc git contrib subtree git-subtree sh    usr lib git-core git-subtree  Thanks to rui araujo from the comments  Clearing your history By default removing files from Git doesn t actually remove them  it just commits that they aren t there anymore  If you want to actually remove the historical references  i e  you committed a password   you need to do this  git filter-branch --prune-empty --tree-filter  rm -rf  lt name-of-folder gt   HEAD  After that  you can check that your file or folder no longer shows up in the Git history at all git log --  lt name-of-folder gt    should show nothing  However  you can t  quot push quot  deletes to GitHub and the like  If you try  you ll get an error and you ll have to git pull before you can git push - and then you re back to having everything in your history  So if you want to delete history from the  quot origin quot  - meaning to delete it from GitHub  Bitbucket  etc - you ll need to delete the repo and re-push a pruned copy of the repo  But wait - there s more  - if you re really concerned about getting rid of a password or something like that you ll need to prune the backup  see below   Making  git smaller The aforementioned delete history command still leaves behind a bunch of backup files - because Git is all too kind in helping you to not ruin your repo by accident  It will eventually delete orphaned files over the days and months  but it leaves them there for a while in case you realize that you accidentally deleted something you didn t want to  So if you really want to empty the trash to reduce the clone size of a repo immediately you have to do all of this really weird stuff  rm -rf  git refs original   amp  amp    git reflog expire --all  amp  amp    git gc --aggressive --prune now  git reflog expire --all --expire-unreachable 0 git repack -A -d git prune  That said  I d recommend not performing these steps unless you know that you need to - just in case you did prune the wrong subdirectory  y know  The backup files shouldn t get cloned when you push the repo  they ll just be in your local copy  Credit  http   psionides eu 2010 02 04 sharing-code-between-projects-with-git-subtree  Remove a directory permanently from git http   blogs atlassian com 2013 05 alternatives-to-git-submodule-git-subtree  How to remove unreferenced blobs from my git repo

User · Answer

Edit  Bash script added   The answers given here worked just partially for me  Lots of big files remained in the cache  What finally worked  after hours in  git on freenode    git clone --no-hardlinks file    SOURCE  tmp blubb cd blubb git filter-branch --subdirectory-filter   PATH TO EXTRACT  --prune-empty --tag-name-filter cat -- --all git clone file    tmp blubb   tmp blooh cd  tmp blooh git reflog expire --expire now --all git repack -ad git gc --prune now   With the previous solutions  the repository size was around 100 MB  This one brought it down to 1 7 MB  Maybe it helps somebody       The following bash script automates the task     bin bash  if        lt  3    then     echo  Usage     0  lt  path to repo  gt   lt directory to extract  gt   lt newName gt       echo     echo  Example   0  Projects 42 git first answer  firstAnswer      exit 1 fi   clone  tmp   3 Clone newN  tmp   3   git clone --no-hardlinks file    1   clone  cd   clone   git filter-branch --subdirectory-filter  2  --prune-empty --tag-name-filter cat -- --all  git clone file     clone    newN  cd   newN   git reflog expire --expire now --all git repack -ad git gc --prune now

User · Answer

Use this filter command to remove a subdirectory  while preserving your tags and branches   git filter-branch --index-filter    git rm -r -f --cached --ignore-unmatch DIR  --prune-empty   --tag-name-filter cat -- --all

User · Answer

Update  This process is so common  that the git team made it much simpler with a new tool  git subtree  See here  Detach  move  subdirectory into separate Git repository    You want to clone your repository and then use git filter-branch to mark everything but the subdirectory you want in your new repo to be garbage-collected    To clone your local repository   git clone  XYZ  ABC    Note  the repository will be cloned using hard-links  but that is not a problem since the hard-linked files will not be modified in themselves - new ones will be created   Now  let us preserve the interesting branches which we want to rewrite as well  and then remove the origin to avoid pushing there and to make sure that old commits will not be referenced by the origin   cd  ABC for i in branch1 br2 br3  do git branch -t  i origin  i  done git remote rm origin   or for all remote branches   cd  ABC for i in   git branch -r   sed  s   origin        do git branch -t  i origin  i  done git remote rm origin  Now you might want to also remove tags which have no relation with the subproject  you can also do that later  but you might need to prune your repo again  I did not do so and got a WARNING  Ref  refs tags v0 1  is unchanged for all tags  since they were all unrelated to the subproject   additionally  after removing such tags more space will be reclaimed  Apparently git filter-branch should be able to rewrite other tags  but I could not verify this  If you want to remove all tags  use git tag -l   xargs git tag -d  Then use filter-branch and reset to exclude the other files  so they can be pruned  Let s also add --tag-name-filter cat --prune-empty to remove empty commits and to rewrite tags  note that this will have to strip their signature    git filter-branch --tag-name-filter cat --prune-empty --subdirectory-filter ABC -- --all   or alternatively  to only rewrite the HEAD branch and ignore tags and other branches   git filter-branch --tag-name-filter cat --prune-empty --subdirectory-filter ABC HEAD  Then delete the backup reflogs so the space can be truly reclaimed  although now the operation is destructive   git reset --hard git for-each-ref --format    refname   refs original    xargs -n 1 git update-ref -d git reflog expire --expire now --all git gc --aggressive --prune now   and now you have a local git repository of the ABC sub-directory with all its history preserved     Note  For most uses  git filter-branch should indeed have the added parameter -- --all  Yes that s really --space-- all   This needs to be the last parameters for the command  As Matli discovered  this keeps the project branches and tags included in the new repo   Edit  various suggestions from comments below were incorporated to make sure  for instance  that the repository is actually shrunk  which was not always the case before

User · Answer

The original question wants XYZ ABC   files  to become ABC ABC   files   After implementing the accepted answer for my own code  I noticed that it actually changes XYZ ABC   files  into ABC   files   The filter-branch man page even says       The result will contain that directory  and only that  as its project root      In other words  it promotes the top-level folder  up  one level  That s an important distinction because  for example  in my history I had renamed a top-level folder  By promoting folders  up  one level  git loses continuity at the commit where I did the rename     My answer to the question then is to make 2 copies of the repository and manually delete the folder s  you want to keep in each  The man page backs me up with this            avoid using  this command   if a simple single commit would suffice to fix your problem

User · Answer

You can easily try the https   help github com enterprise 2 15 user articles splitting-a-subfolder-out-into-a-new-repository   This worked for me  The issues i faced in the steps given above are    in this command git filter-branch --prune-empty --subdirectory-filter FOLDER-NAME  BRANCH-NAME  The BRANCH-NAME is master if the last step fails when committing due to protection issue follow - https   docs gitlab com ee user project protected branches html

User · Answer

I had exactly this problem but all the standard solutions based on git filter-branch were extremely slow  If you have a small repository then this may not be a problem  it was for me  I wrote another git filtering program based on libgit2 which as a first step creates branches for each filtering of the primary repository and then pushes these to clean repositories as the next step  On my repository  500Mb 100000 commits  the standard git filter-branch methods took days  My program takes minutes to do the same filtering   It has the fabulous name of git filter and lives here    https   github com slobobaby git filter   on GitHub   I hope it is useful to someone

User · Answer

To add to Paul s answer  I found that to ultimately recover space  I have to push HEAD to a clean repository and that trims down the size of the  git objects pack directory   i e      mkdir    ABC git   cd    ABC git   git init --bare   After the gc prune  also do      git push    ABC git HEAD   Then you can do     git clone    ABC git   and the size of ABC  git is reduced  Actually  some of the time consuming steps  e g  git gc  aren t needed with the push to clean repository  i e       git clone --no-hardlinks  XYZ  ABC   git filter-branch --subdirectory-filter ABC HEAD   git reset --hard   git push    ABC git HEAD

User · Answer

You might need something like  git reflog expire --expire now --all  before the garbage collection to actually clean the files out  git filter-branch just removes references in the history  but doesn t remove the reflog entries that hold the data  Of course  test this first   My disk usage dropped dramatically in doing this  though my initial conditions were somewhat different  Perhaps --subdirectory-filter negates this need  but I doubt it

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It appears that most  all   of the answers here rely on some form of git filter-branch --subdirectory-filter and its ilk   This may work  quot most times quot  however for some cases  for instance the case of when you renamed the folder  ex   ABC       move this dir   did some work here  then renamed it to  ABC       move this dir renamed  If you do a normal git filter style to extract  quot move this dir renamed quot  you will lose file change history that occurred from back when it was initially  quot move this dir quot   ref   It thus appears that the only way to really keep all change history  if yours is a case like this   is  in essence  to copy the repository  create a new repo  set that to be the origin   then nuke everything else and rename the subdirectory to the parent like this   Clone the multi-module project locally Branches - check what s there  git branch -a Do a checkout to each branch to be included in the split to get a local copy on your workstation  git checkout --track origin branchABC Make a copy in a new directory  cp -r oldmultimod simple Go into the new project copy  cd simple Get rid of the other modules that aren t needed in this project  git rm otherModule1 other2 other3 Now only the subdir of the target module remains Get rid of the module subdir so that the module root becomes the new project root git mv moduleSubdir1     Delete the relic subdir  rmdir moduleSubdir1 Check changes at any  point  git status Create the new git repo and copy its URL to point this project into it  git remote set-url origin http   mygithost 8080 git our-splitted-module-repo Verify this is good  git remote -v Push the changes up to the remote repo  git push Go to the remote repo and check it s all there Repeat it for any other branch needed  git checkout branch2  This follows the github doc  quot Splitting a subfolder out into a new repository quot  steps 6-11 to push the module to a new repo  This will not save you any space in your  git folder  but it will preserve all your change history for those files even across renames   And this may not be worth it if there isn t  quot a lot quot  of history lost  etc   But at least you are guaranteed not to lose older commits

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I ve found quite straight forward solution   The idea is to copy repository and then just remove unnecessary part  This is how it works   1  Clone a repository you d like to split  git clone git git thehost io testrepo test git   2  Move to git folder  cd test    2  Remove unnecessary folders and commit it  rm -r ABC  git add   enter code here git commit -m  Remove ABC    3  Remove unnecessary folder s  form history with BFG  cd    java -jar bfg jar --delete-folders   ABC   test cd test  git reflog expire --expire now --all  amp  amp  git gc --prune now --aggressive      for multiply folders you can use comma  java -jar bfg jar --delete-folders   ABC1 ABC2   metric git    4  Check that history doesn t contains the files folders you just deleted  git log --diff-filter D --summary   grep delete   5  Now you have clean repository without ABC  so just push it into new origin  remote add origin git github com username new repo git push -u origin master   That s it  You can repeat the steps to get another repository    just remove XY1 XY2 and rename XYZ -  ABC on step 3

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Here is a small modification to CoolAJ86 s  The Easy Way trade   answer in order to split multiple sub folders  let s say sub1and sub2  into a new git repository   The Easy Way trade   multiple sub folders    Prepare the old repo  pushd  lt big-repo gt  git filter-branch --tree-filter  mkdir  lt name-of-folder gt   mv  lt sub1 gt   lt sub2 gt   lt name-of-folder gt    HEAD git subtree split -P  lt name-of-folder gt  -b  lt name-of-new-branch gt  popd   Note   lt name-of-folder gt  must NOT contain leading or trailing characters   For instance  the folder named subproject MUST be passed as subproject  NOT   subproject   Note for windows users  when your folder depth is   1   lt name-of-folder gt  must have  nix style folder separator      For instance  the folder named path1 path2 subproject MUST be passed as path1 path2 subproject  Moreover don t use mvcommand but move   Final note  the unique and big difference with the base answer is the second line of the script  git filter-branch     Create the new repo  mkdir  lt new-repo gt  pushd  lt new-repo gt   git init git pull  lt  path to big-repo gt   lt name-of-new-branch gt   Link the new repo to Github or wherever  git remote add origin  lt git github com my-user new-repo git gt  git push origin -u master  Cleanup  if desired  popd   get out of  lt new-repo gt  pushd  lt big-repo gt   git rm -rf  lt name-of-folder gt    Note  This leaves all the historical references in the repository See the Appendix in the original answer if you re actually concerned about having committed a password or you need to decreasing the file size of your  git folder

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I recommend GitHub s guide to splitting subfolders into a new repository  The steps are similar to Paul s answer  but I found their instructions easier to understand   I have modified the instructions so that they apply for a local repository  rather than one hosted on GitHub        Splitting a subfolder out into a new repository         Open Git Bash    Change the current working directory to the location where you want to create your new repository    Clone the repository that contains the subfolder            git clone OLD-REPOSITORY-FOLDER NEW-REPOSITORY-FOLDER          Change the current working directory to your cloned repository            cd REPOSITORY-NAME          To filter out the subfolder from the rest of the files in the repository  run git filter-branch  supplying this information          FOLDER-NAME  The folder within your project that you d like to create a separate repository from          Tip  Windows users should use   to delimit folders       BRANCH-NAME  The default branch for your current project  for example  master or gh-pages               git filter-branch --prune-empty --subdirectory-filter FOLDER-NAME  BRANCH-NAME    Filter the specified branch in your directory and remove empty commits Rewrite 48dc599c80e20527ed902928085e7861e6b3cbe6  89 89  Ref  refs heads BRANCH-NAME  was rewritten

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Edit  Bash script added   The answers given here worked just partially for me  Lots of big files remained in the cache  What finally worked  after hours in  git on freenode    git clone --no-hardlinks file    SOURCE  tmp blubb cd blubb git filter-branch --subdirectory-filter   PATH TO EXTRACT  --prune-empty --tag-name-filter cat -- --all git clone file    tmp blubb   tmp blooh cd  tmp blooh git reflog expire --expire now --all git repack -ad git gc --prune now   With the previous solutions  the repository size was around 100 MB  This one brought it down to 1 7 MB  Maybe it helps somebody       The following bash script automates the task     bin bash  if        lt  3    then     echo  Usage     0  lt  path to repo  gt   lt directory to extract  gt   lt newName gt       echo     echo  Example   0  Projects 42 git first answer  firstAnswer      exit 1 fi   clone  tmp   3 Clone newN  tmp   3   git clone --no-hardlinks file    1   clone  cd   clone   git filter-branch --subdirectory-filter  2  --prune-empty --tag-name-filter cat -- --all  git clone file     clone    newN  cd   newN   git reflog expire --expire now --all git repack -ad git gc --prune now

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Use this filter command to remove a subdirectory  while preserving your tags and branches   git filter-branch --index-filter    git rm -r -f --cached --ignore-unmatch DIR  --prune-empty   --tag-name-filter cat -- --all

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I recommend GitHub s guide to splitting subfolders into a new repository  The steps are similar to Paul s answer  but I found their instructions easier to understand   I have modified the instructions so that they apply for a local repository  rather than one hosted on GitHub        Splitting a subfolder out into a new repository         Open Git Bash    Change the current working directory to the location where you want to create your new repository    Clone the repository that contains the subfolder            git clone OLD-REPOSITORY-FOLDER NEW-REPOSITORY-FOLDER          Change the current working directory to your cloned repository            cd REPOSITORY-NAME          To filter out the subfolder from the rest of the files in the repository  run git filter-branch  supplying this information          FOLDER-NAME  The folder within your project that you d like to create a separate repository from          Tip  Windows users should use   to delimit folders       BRANCH-NAME  The default branch for your current project  for example  master or gh-pages               git filter-branch --prune-empty --subdirectory-filter FOLDER-NAME  BRANCH-NAME    Filter the specified branch in your directory and remove empty commits Rewrite 48dc599c80e20527ed902928085e7861e6b3cbe6  89 89  Ref  refs heads BRANCH-NAME  was rewritten

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The Easier Way   install git splits  I created it as a git extension  based on jkeating s solution   Split the directories into a local branch      change into your repo s directory    cd  path to repo     checkout the branch    git checkout XYZ     split multiple directories into new branch XYZ    git splits -b XYZ XY1 XY2  Create an empty repo somewhere  We ll assume we ve created an empty repo called xyz on GitHub that has path   git github com simpliwp xyz git Push to the new repo       add a new remote origin for the empty repo so we can push to the empty repo on GitHub    git remote add origin xyz git github com simpliwp xyz git     push the branch to the empty repo s master branch    git push origin xyz XYZ master  Clone the newly created remote repo into a new local directory      change current directory out of the old repo    cd  path to where you want the new local repo     clone the remote repo you just pushed to     git clone  git github com simpliwp xyz git

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I   ve found that in order to properly delete the old history from the new repository  you have to do a little more work after the filter-branch step    Do the clone and the filter   git clone --no-hardlinks foo bar  cd bar git filter-branch --subdirectory-filter subdir you want  Remove every reference to the old history     origin    was keeping track of your clone  and    original    is where filter-branch saves the old stuff   git remote rm origin git update-ref -d refs original refs heads master git reflog expire --expire now --all  Even now  your history might be stuck in a packfile that fsck won   t touch  Tear it to shreds  creating a new packfile and deleting the unused objects   git repack -ad    There is an explanation of this in the manual for filter-branch

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When running git filter-branch using a newer version of git  2 22  maybe    it says to use this new tool git-filter-repo  This tool certainly simplified things for me   Filtering with filter-repo  Commands to create the XYZ repo from the original question     create local clone of original repo in directory XYZ tmp   git clone git github com user original git XYZ    switch to working in XYZ tmp   cd XYZ    keep subdirectories XY1 and XY2  dropping ABC  XYZ   git filter-repo --path XY1 --path XY2    note  original remote origin was dropped    protecting against accidental pushes overwriting original repo data     XYZ   ls -1   XY1   XY2    XYZ   git log --oneline   last commit modifying   XY1 or   XY2   first commit modifying   XY1 or   XY2    point at new hosted  dedicated repo XYZ   git remote add origin git github com user XYZ git    push  and track  remote master XYZ   git push -u origin master   assumptions     remote XYZ repo was new and empty before the push  Filtering and moving  In my case  I also wanted to move a couple of directories for a more consistent structure  Initially  I ran that simple filter-repo command followed by git mv dir-to-rename  but I found I could get a slightly  better  history using the --path-rename option  Instead of seeing last modified 5 hours ago on moved files in the new repo I now see last year  in the GitHub UI   which matches the modified times in the original repo   Instead of     git filter-repo --path XY1 --path XY2 --path inconsistent git mv inconsistent XY3    which updates last modification time   I ultimately ran     git filter-repo --path XY1 --path XY2 --path inconsistent --path-rename inconsistent XY3   Notes    I thought the Git Rev News blog post explained well the reasoning behind creating yet another repo-filtering tool  I initially tried the path of creating a sub-directory matching the target repo name in the original repository and then filtering  using git filter-repo --subdirectory-filter dir-matching-new-repo-name   That command correctly converted that subdirectory to the root of the copied local repo  but it also resulted in a history of only the three commits it took to create the subdirectory   I hadn t realized that --path could be specified multiple times  thereby  obviating the need to create a subdirectory in the source repo   Since someone had committed to the source repo by the time I noticed that I d failed to carry forward the history  I just used git reset commit-before-subdir-move --hard after the clone command  and added --force to the filter-repo command to get it to operate on the slightly modified local clone    git clone     git reset HEAD 7 --hard        roll back before mistake git filter-repo     --force    tell filter-repo the alterations are expected    I was stumped on the install since I was unaware of the extension pattern with git  but ultimately I cloned git-filter-repo and symlinked it to   git --exec-path     ln -s   github newren git-filter-repo git-filter-repo   git --exec-path

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I m sure git subtree is all fine and wonderful  but my subdirectories of git managed code that I wanted to move was all in eclipse  So if you re using egit  it s painfully easy  Take the project you want to move and team- disconnect it  and then team- share it to the new location  It will default to trying to use the old repo location  but you can uncheck the use-existing selection and pick the new place to move it  All hail egit

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The original question wants XYZ ABC   files  to become ABC ABC   files   After implementing the accepted answer for my own code  I noticed that it actually changes XYZ ABC   files  into ABC   files   The filter-branch man page even says       The result will contain that directory  and only that  as its project root      In other words  it promotes the top-level folder  up  one level  That s an important distinction because  for example  in my history I had renamed a top-level folder  By promoting folders  up  one level  git loses continuity at the commit where I did the rename     My answer to the question then is to make 2 copies of the repository and manually delete the folder s  you want to keep in each  The man page backs me up with this            avoid using  this command   if a simple single commit would suffice to fix your problem

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Proper way now is the following   git filter-branch --prune-empty --subdirectory-filter FOLDER NAME  first branch   another branch   GitHub now even have small article about such cases   But be sure to clone your original repo to separate directory first  as it would delete all the files and other directories and you probable need to work with them    So your algorithm should be    clone your remote repo to another directory using git filter-branch left only files under some subdirectory  push to new remote create commit to remove this subdirectory from your original remote repo

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Paul s answer creates a new repository containing  ABC  but does not remove  ABC from within  XYZ   The following command will remove  ABC from within  XYZ   git filter-branch --tree-filter  rm -rf ABC  --prune-empty HEAD   Of course  test it in a  clone --no-hardlinks  repository first  and follow it with the reset  gc and prune commands Paul lists

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Proper way now is the following   git filter-branch --prune-empty --subdirectory-filter FOLDER NAME  first branch   another branch   GitHub now even have small article about such cases   But be sure to clone your original repo to separate directory first  as it would delete all the files and other directories and you probable need to work with them    So your algorithm should be    clone your remote repo to another directory using git filter-branch left only files under some subdirectory  push to new remote create commit to remove this subdirectory from your original remote repo

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The Easier Way   install git splits  I created it as a git extension  based on jkeating s solution   Split the directories into a local branch      change into your repo s directory    cd  path to repo     checkout the branch    git checkout XYZ     split multiple directories into new branch XYZ    git splits -b XYZ XY1 XY2  Create an empty repo somewhere  We ll assume we ve created an empty repo called xyz on GitHub that has path   git github com simpliwp xyz git Push to the new repo       add a new remote origin for the empty repo so we can push to the empty repo on GitHub    git remote add origin xyz git github com simpliwp xyz git     push the branch to the empty repo s master branch    git push origin xyz XYZ master  Clone the newly created remote repo into a new local directory      change current directory out of the old repo    cd  path to where you want the new local repo     clone the remote repo you just pushed to     git clone  git github com simpliwp xyz git

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I   ve found that in order to properly delete the old history from the new repository  you have to do a little more work after the filter-branch step    Do the clone and the filter   git clone --no-hardlinks foo bar  cd bar git filter-branch --subdirectory-filter subdir you want  Remove every reference to the old history     origin    was keeping track of your clone  and    original    is where filter-branch saves the old stuff   git remote rm origin git update-ref -d refs original refs heads master git reflog expire --expire now --all  Even now  your history might be stuck in a packfile that fsck won   t touch  Tear it to shreds  creating a new packfile and deleting the unused objects   git repack -ad    There is an explanation of this in the manual for filter-branch

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Check out git split project at https   github com vangorra git split  Turn git directories into their very own repositories in their own location  No subtree funny business  This script will take an existing directory in your git repository and turn that directory into an independent repository of its own  Along the way  it will copy over the entire change history for the directory you provided      git split sh  lt src repo gt   lt src branch gt   lt relative dir path gt   lt dest repo gt          src repo  - The source repo to pull from          src branch - The branch of the source repo to pull from   usually master          relative dir path   - Relative path of the directory in the source repo to split          dest repo - The repo to push to

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Update  This process is so common  that the git team made it much simpler with a new tool  git subtree  See here  Detach  move  subdirectory into separate Git repository    You want to clone your repository and then use git filter-branch to mark everything but the subdirectory you want in your new repo to be garbage-collected    To clone your local repository   git clone  XYZ  ABC    Note  the repository will be cloned using hard-links  but that is not a problem since the hard-linked files will not be modified in themselves - new ones will be created   Now  let us preserve the interesting branches which we want to rewrite as well  and then remove the origin to avoid pushing there and to make sure that old commits will not be referenced by the origin   cd  ABC for i in branch1 br2 br3  do git branch -t  i origin  i  done git remote rm origin   or for all remote branches   cd  ABC for i in   git branch -r   sed  s   origin        do git branch -t  i origin  i  done git remote rm origin  Now you might want to also remove tags which have no relation with the subproject  you can also do that later  but you might need to prune your repo again  I did not do so and got a WARNING  Ref  refs tags v0 1  is unchanged for all tags  since they were all unrelated to the subproject   additionally  after removing such tags more space will be reclaimed  Apparently git filter-branch should be able to rewrite other tags  but I could not verify this  If you want to remove all tags  use git tag -l   xargs git tag -d  Then use filter-branch and reset to exclude the other files  so they can be pruned  Let s also add --tag-name-filter cat --prune-empty to remove empty commits and to rewrite tags  note that this will have to strip their signature    git filter-branch --tag-name-filter cat --prune-empty --subdirectory-filter ABC -- --all   or alternatively  to only rewrite the HEAD branch and ignore tags and other branches   git filter-branch --tag-name-filter cat --prune-empty --subdirectory-filter ABC HEAD  Then delete the backup reflogs so the space can be truly reclaimed  although now the operation is destructive   git reset --hard git for-each-ref --format    refname   refs original    xargs -n 1 git update-ref -d git reflog expire --expire now --all git gc --aggressive --prune now   and now you have a local git repository of the ABC sub-directory with all its history preserved     Note  For most uses  git filter-branch should indeed have the added parameter -- --all  Yes that s really --space-- all   This needs to be the last parameters for the command  As Matli discovered  this keeps the project branches and tags included in the new repo   Edit  various suggestions from comments below were incorporated to make sure  for instance  that the repository is actually shrunk  which was not always the case before

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For what it s worth  here is how using GitHub on a Windows machine  Let s say you have a cloned repo in residing in C  dir1  The directory structure looks like this  C  dir1 dir2 dir3  The dir3 directory is the one I want to be a new separate repo     Github    Create your new repository  MyTeam mynewrepo   Bash Prompt      cd c  Dir1   git filter-branch --prune-empty --subdirectory-filter dir2 dir3 HEAD Returned  Ref  refs heads master  was rewritten  fyi  dir2 dir3 is case sensitive     git remote add some name git github com MyTeam mynewrepo git git remote add origin etc  did not work  returned  remote origin already exists    git push --progress some name master

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As I mentioned above  I had to use the reverse solution  deleting all commits not touching my dir subdir targetdir  which seemed to work pretty well removing about 95  of the commits  as desired    There are  however  two small issues remaining   FIRST  filter-branch did a bang up job of removing commits which introduce or modify code but apparently  merge commits are beneath its station in the Gitiverse      Screenshot  Merge Madness    This is a cosmetic issue which I can probably live with  he says   backing away slowly with eyes averted    SECOND the few commits that remain are pretty much ALL duplicated   I seem to have acquired a second  redundant timeline that spans just about the entire history of the project   The interesting thing  which you can see from the picture below   is that my three local branches are not all on the same timeline  which is  certainly why it exists and isn t just garbage collected     Screnshot  Double-double  Git filter-branch style   The only thing I can imagine is that one of the deleted commits was  perhaps  the single merge commit that filter-branch actually did delete  and that created the parallel timeline as each now-unmerged strand took its own copy of the commits   shrug Where s my TARDiS    I m pretty sure I can fix this issue  though I d really love to understand how it happened   In the case of crazy mergefest-O-RAMA  I ll likely be leaving that one alone since it has so firmly entrenched itself in my commit history   menacing at me whenever I come near     it doesn t seem to be actually causing any non-cosmetic problems and because it is quite pretty in Tower app

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Update  The git-subtree module was so useful that the git team pulled it into core and made it git subtree  See here  Detach  move  subdirectory into separate Git repository  git-subtree may be useful for this  http   github com apenwarr git-subtree blob master git-subtree txt  deprecated   http   psionides jogger pl 2010 02 04 sharing-code-between-projects-with-git-subtree

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Check out git split project at https   github com vangorra git split  Turn git directories into their very own repositories in their own location  No subtree funny business  This script will take an existing directory in your git repository and turn that directory into an independent repository of its own  Along the way  it will copy over the entire change history for the directory you provided      git split sh  lt src repo gt   lt src branch gt   lt relative dir path gt   lt dest repo gt          src repo  - The source repo to pull from          src branch - The branch of the source repo to pull from   usually master          relative dir path   - Relative path of the directory in the source repo to split          dest repo - The repo to push to

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When running git filter-branch using a newer version of git  2 22  maybe    it says to use this new tool git-filter-repo  This tool certainly simplified things for me   Filtering with filter-repo  Commands to create the XYZ repo from the original question     create local clone of original repo in directory XYZ tmp   git clone git github com user original git XYZ    switch to working in XYZ tmp   cd XYZ    keep subdirectories XY1 and XY2  dropping ABC  XYZ   git filter-repo --path XY1 --path XY2    note  original remote origin was dropped    protecting against accidental pushes overwriting original repo data     XYZ   ls -1   XY1   XY2    XYZ   git log --oneline   last commit modifying   XY1 or   XY2   first commit modifying   XY1 or   XY2    point at new hosted  dedicated repo XYZ   git remote add origin git github com user XYZ git    push  and track  remote master XYZ   git push -u origin master   assumptions     remote XYZ repo was new and empty before the push  Filtering and moving  In my case  I also wanted to move a couple of directories for a more consistent structure  Initially  I ran that simple filter-repo command followed by git mv dir-to-rename  but I found I could get a slightly  better  history using the --path-rename option  Instead of seeing last modified 5 hours ago on moved files in the new repo I now see last year  in the GitHub UI   which matches the modified times in the original repo   Instead of     git filter-repo --path XY1 --path XY2 --path inconsistent git mv inconsistent XY3    which updates last modification time   I ultimately ran     git filter-repo --path XY1 --path XY2 --path inconsistent --path-rename inconsistent XY3   Notes    I thought the Git Rev News blog post explained well the reasoning behind creating yet another repo-filtering tool  I initially tried the path of creating a sub-directory matching the target repo name in the original repository and then filtering  using git filter-repo --subdirectory-filter dir-matching-new-repo-name   That command correctly converted that subdirectory to the root of the copied local repo  but it also resulted in a history of only the three commits it took to create the subdirectory   I hadn t realized that --path could be specified multiple times  thereby  obviating the need to create a subdirectory in the source repo   Since someone had committed to the source repo by the time I noticed that I d failed to carry forward the history  I just used git reset commit-before-subdir-move --hard after the clone command  and added --force to the filter-repo command to get it to operate on the slightly modified local clone    git clone     git reset HEAD 7 --hard        roll back before mistake git filter-repo     --force    tell filter-repo the alterations are expected    I was stumped on the install since I was unaware of the extension pattern with git  but ultimately I cloned git-filter-repo and symlinked it to   git --exec-path     ln -s   github newren git-filter-repo git-filter-repo   git --exec-path

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Paul s answer creates a new repository containing  ABC  but does not remove  ABC from within  XYZ   The following command will remove  ABC from within  XYZ   git filter-branch --tree-filter  rm -rf ABC  --prune-empty HEAD   Of course  test it in a  clone --no-hardlinks  repository first  and follow it with the reset  gc and prune commands Paul lists

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Update  The git-subtree module was so useful that the git team pulled it into core and made it git subtree  See here  Detach  move  subdirectory into separate Git repository  git-subtree may be useful for this  http   github com apenwarr git-subtree blob master git-subtree txt  deprecated   http   psionides jogger pl 2010 02 04 sharing-code-between-projects-with-git-subtree

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I ve found quite straight forward solution   The idea is to copy repository and then just remove unnecessary part  This is how it works   1  Clone a repository you d like to split  git clone git git thehost io testrepo test git   2  Move to git folder  cd test    2  Remove unnecessary folders and commit it  rm -r ABC  git add   enter code here git commit -m  Remove ABC    3  Remove unnecessary folder s  form history with BFG  cd    java -jar bfg jar --delete-folders   ABC   test cd test  git reflog expire --expire now --all  amp  amp  git gc --prune now --aggressive      for multiply folders you can use comma  java -jar bfg jar --delete-folders   ABC1 ABC2   metric git    4  Check that history doesn t contains the files folders you just deleted  git log --diff-filter D --summary   grep delete   5  Now you have clean repository without ABC  so just push it into new origin  remote add origin git github com username new repo git push -u origin master   That s it  You can repeat the steps to get another repository    just remove XY1 XY2 and rename XYZ -  ABC on step 3

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To add to Paul s answer  I found that to ultimately recover space  I have to push HEAD to a clean repository and that trims down the size of the  git objects pack directory   i e      mkdir    ABC git   cd    ABC git   git init --bare   After the gc prune  also do      git push    ABC git HEAD   Then you can do     git clone    ABC git   and the size of ABC  git is reduced  Actually  some of the time consuming steps  e g  git gc  aren t needed with the push to clean repository  i e       git clone --no-hardlinks  XYZ  ABC   git filter-branch --subdirectory-filter ABC HEAD   git reset --hard   git push    ABC git HEAD

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It appears that most  all   of the answers here rely on some form of git filter-branch --subdirectory-filter and its ilk   This may work  quot most times quot  however for some cases  for instance the case of when you renamed the folder  ex   ABC       move this dir   did some work here  then renamed it to  ABC       move this dir renamed  If you do a normal git filter style to extract  quot move this dir renamed quot  you will lose file change history that occurred from back when it was initially  quot move this dir quot   ref   It thus appears that the only way to really keep all change history  if yours is a case like this   is  in essence  to copy the repository  create a new repo  set that to be the origin   then nuke everything else and rename the subdirectory to the parent like this   Clone the multi-module project locally Branches - check what s there  git branch -a Do a checkout to each branch to be included in the split to get a local copy on your workstation  git checkout --track origin branchABC Make a copy in a new directory  cp -r oldmultimod simple Go into the new project copy  cd simple Get rid of the other modules that aren t needed in this project  git rm otherModule1 other2 other3 Now only the subdir of the target module remains Get rid of the module subdir so that the module root becomes the new project root git mv moduleSubdir1     Delete the relic subdir  rmdir moduleSubdir1 Check changes at any  point  git status Create the new git repo and copy its URL to point this project into it  git remote set-url origin http   mygithost 8080 git our-splitted-module-repo Verify this is good  git remote -v Push the changes up to the remote repo  git push Go to the remote repo and check it s all there Repeat it for any other branch needed  git checkout branch2  This follows the github doc  quot Splitting a subfolder out into a new repository quot  steps 6-11 to push the module to a new repo  This will not save you any space in your  git folder  but it will preserve all your change history for those files even across renames   And this may not be worth it if there isn t  quot a lot quot  of history lost  etc   But at least you are guaranteed not to lose older commits

User · Answer

I m sure git subtree is all fine and wonderful  but my subdirectories of git managed code that I wanted to move was all in eclipse  So if you re using egit  it s painfully easy  Take the project you want to move and team- disconnect it  and then team- share it to the new location  It will default to trying to use the old repo location  but you can uncheck the use-existing selection and pick the new place to move it  All hail egit

User · Answer

This is no longer so complex you can just use the git filter-branch command on a clone of you repo to cull the subdirectories you don t want and then push to the new remote   git filter-branch --prune-empty --subdirectory-filter  lt YOUR SUBDIR TO KEEP gt  master git push  lt MY NEW REMOTE URL gt  -f

[git] Detach (move) subdirectory into separate Git repository

The Easy Way™

Walkthrough

Appendix

Latest Git on macOS

Latest Git on Ubuntu

Clearing your history

Making `.git` smaller

Credit

Examples related to git

Examples related to git-subtree

Examples related to git-filter-branch