CODEWITHSUNDEEP
git
WoJ
WoJ

Reputation: 29987

How to remove irrelevant history when splitting a repo?

I have a repository in which, at some point, a directory was added. Initially it looked like this directory would live with this repo but finally I decided to extract it into its own repo, independent of the first one.

I did this according to GitHub instructions. The extraction was a success, I was left with only the directory I needed.

When looking at the git history, I see that the part which is not relevant to that specific directory is still there:

enter image description here

The directory was initially added with the "added alerting module" commit (first one at the bottom of the yellow area):

Is it possible to get rid of the "gray" commits (ending up on the branch original/refs/heads/master)?

This is not a critical need - I can live with that part being dragged forever (and not updated in this repo) but for mostly aesthetical reasons I would be glad to get rid of it.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 95

Answers (1)

Marcus
Marcus

Reputation: 725

You can use git filter-branch just like you did it to get the result the other way round. Just replace subdirectory-filter (which means "only keep specified directory") with index-filter (which means "do something with the index before each commit").

To specify the "something" in "do something", index-filter takes as parameter a bash command which should modify the git index. In your case, the command should simply delete the unwanted directory. For example:

--index-filter 'git rm -r -q --cached --ignore-unmatch the/unwanted/directory'

Leave everything else just you had it when extracting the directory.

Alternatively, take a look at filter-branch-docs. It has a bunch of options.

Upvotes: 1

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