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N Laras
N Laras

Reputation: 11

How to remove a git nested repo but keep the files from one of the branches?

I have just copied a directory to another local git repo. It turns out that directory I copied is also another git repo, so now I have what I assume is called a nested repo.

I wanted to keep the outer repo and then to integrate the inner repo as the outer repo (modifying the remote origin, per say). One of my concern is because the inner repo has several branches. There is only one branch among them that I wanted to keep.

I am quite confused with what's the best practice to solve this issue. Hope someone can give me some pointers for this. Thanks!

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1870

Answers (2)

Maxpm
Maxpm

Reputation: 25592

You can use git subtree to import files from a second repository while keeping their history.

  1. Start from a clean working tree (check with git status). If you've already tried to manually copy files in, delete them. Git will copy them for you.
  2. cd to the top level of your repository.
  3. Run git subtree add --prefix=inner path/to/other/repo some-branch. This creates an inner subdirectory and puts the contents of the other repo's some-branch in it.
  4. Observe that git log shows the history of the imported files.

Upvotes: 0

Timothy Truckle
Timothy Truckle

Reputation: 15622

You can only keep the files, not the history.

  • checkout the desired branch at that other location.
  • copy the other repo into the target repo.
  • delete .git folder and any .git* file from the destination folder.
  • checkin the new folder into the target repo

In the git shell do this:

/other/location/otherPrepo>git checkout the-branch-wanted
/other/location/otherPrepo>cp -R  * -R /target/location/targetRepo/targetFolder/
/other/location/otherPrepo>rm -rf /target/location/targetRepo/targetFolder/.git*
/other/location/otherPrepo>cd  /target/location/targetRepo/
/target/location/targetRepo/>git add  targetFolder
/target/location/targetRepo/>git commit -m "added files from otherPrepo"

[edit:] don't forget the checkin...

Upvotes: 1

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