Transferring commits between repositories

Question

There were two independent repositories with their own stories: A and B. At some point, it was decided to place the entire contents of B in A. This was done by simply copying files, i.e. in A , a single commit for this action appeared. Further, the repository A developed, in particular, the parts that used to be in B changed.

Now there is an awareness that it was not worth merging the whole thing into one repository and needs to be developed separately.

My first thought: just transfer all the parts (files) that should be in B from A. Thus, a single commit will appear again and you can live on. But I would still like to transfer the change history of these files to the repository B.

In this regard, the question: is there any mechanism that allows you to transfer commits between unrelated repositories? The option of manually copying each individual state with the corresponding description is not suggested :) I would like, conditionally, to set the range of commits from A and apply them to B.

Pavel Mayorov Pavel Mayorov 48.9k five 51 110 · Accepted Answer · 2017-09-13T14:13:20

First of all, you need a working copy with two remote repositories. An example of obtaining such a copy:

git init git remote add remote_a url_a git remote add remote_b url_b git fetch remote_a git fetch remote_b git checkout -b master remote_a/master

First, you need to highlight in A the changes in the files, which actually should be in B. This is done by the git filter-branch command, the exact command will depend on how you are going to separate the files of different repositories. Most likely it will be something like:

 git filter-branch --subdirectory-filter path/to/b <начальный коммит>..HEAD

Now the resulting branch remains to rebuild on B and push:

 git rebase <начальный коммит> --onto remote_b/master git push remote_b HEAD:master

Not tested, there may be typos.

So will it be limited if the initial commit is really the initial one?
@alexolut but you said that the files from B were copied to an already existing A?
So, the initial commit for B inside A is not the initial commit for A.
I had to tinker a bit because of the presence of different branches and resolve conflicts during a rebase , but everything rebase out.
However, some commits have been duplicated and now something like >>>>>>> Merge commit 'c99785032a9... now jumps >>>>>>> Merge commit 'c99785032a9... .

Answer 2 · 2017-09-13T13:24:54

We would like, conditionally, to set a range of commits from A and apply them to B.

In principle, this can be arranged with a combination of two teams. Get a list of all commits from and to with the git rev-list command. Then apply them with the git cherry-pick command.

 git cherry-pick `git rev-list --reverse <commit_hash_1>..<commit_hash_2>`

<commit_hash_1> and <commit_hash_2> should be replaced with initial and final hash hashes that define your range. We ask Git to list them in reverse order, from earlier to later. (rev-list simply outputs them to the standard stream). This is all so that git cherry-pick uses them correctly.

The specified command must be executed within the target repository (B). It is assumed that you have previously synchronized with the source repository (A). For example:

 git fetch https://github.com/octocat/Hello-World

In your opinion, you have git rebase <commit_hash_1> <commit_hash_2> --onto HEAD :)
@alexolut, it is assumed that you have previously synchronized with the source repository.

Transferring commits between repositories

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