The purpose of this post is to explain how to migrate code with commit history using the tool git-filter-repo
.
Background
Recently, I undertook a task that required migrating a specific folder from one project into a new code repository to preserve the commit history. After some effort, I finally discovered the git-filter-repo
tool, which perfectly accomplished this job. I am documenting this experience here.
Install git-filter-repo
To start, install git-filter-repo
. The easiest way to do this on Mac is by using brew
.
brew install git-filter-repo
It is an open-source tool, and the source code can be found at https://github.com/newren/git-filter-repo
Checkout a new branch
Create a new branch based on main
branch in the original code repository for the partial migration.
git checkout -b feature/JIRA-123-github-migration
Filter the directories and files that need to be migrated
If there are these files or directories that need to be migrated:
- File Lambda.sln
- File Lambda.Worker.sln.DotSettings.use
- Directory Worker
- Directory Worker.Tests
If you'd like to migrate them to folder ~/repos/NewLambda
, then specify the files or directories that need to be migrated and the target folder using the --path
and --target
options, respectively.
git filter-repo --path Lambda.sln --path Lambda.Worker.sln.DotSettings.user --path Worker --path Worker.Tests --target ~/repos/NewLambda
Check result
Confirm the migration results by checking if the directories have been successfully migrated and if the project files not in the migration scope are excluded. You can execute ls
under ~/repos/NewLambda
folder.
Verify the completeness of the commit history migration by using the command git log --oneline
in the target directory, ~/repos/NewLambda
.
Push the migrated to remote
If the migration is intended for GitHub, create a new repository on GitHub and add the remote origin to the local target directory.
Push the migrated files to the new repository on GitHub.
git push --set-upstream origin $(git branch --show-current)
Submit a PR
Finally, submit a pull request from the migrated branch to the main branch for team members to review.
These steps are to migrate a code repository and retain the commit history using git-filter-repo
.
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