Is it possible to preserve git version history for moved files when splitting a repository?

Question

I saw this question, but the answer does not discuss preserving the history of files that have been moved prior to the splitting of the first repository.

What I'm interested is the following scenario: there is initially one repo, and some files have been moved around in this repo at various times due to refactoring. Now, we are splitting this initial repo by choosing a subset of the files from this repo to create another. If we perform filter-branch with the --subdirectory-filter argument, we can restrict the new repo to only the history relevant to the remaining files.
However, after some experimentation, this seems to destroy history in the files that were created prior to the last time the file was moved (i.e., git log --follow no longer has any record of file renames to follow).

Is there any way around this so that git blame and git log can still follow the full history of the file when performing the filter-branch command, or is there any other way to preserve the history of files that have been moved or renamed?

why not just `git clone` the repo and wipe the files you don't want from each one? — Thunder Rabbit, May 02 '12 at 02:33
Then how about this: http://help.github.com/remove-sensitive-data/ — Thunder Rabbit, May 03 '12 at 00:57
I had read "preserving the history of files" in your question and that's why I thought you want to keep the history of each file. :-) — Thunder Rabbit, May 03 '12 at 00:58
Wait, do you want the *history* of changes, but not the file itself? — Thunder Rabbit, May 03 '12 at 00:59
Yes, the history of all of the files that remain in the new repo, but not the history of the files that were filtered out. — jonderry, May 04 '12 at 21:02
The github link above is helpful, though it doesn't seem to address the issue of renamed files. — jonderry, May 05 '12 at 19:21

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 04 '12 at 12:01

Keep the big (original) repository as-is, create two new repositories that contain what you want, and glue them to the original one with git grafts.

This way you don't need two separate copies of the entire history, and those who don't need the history at all don't have to clone it.

Is it possible to preserve git version history for moved files when splitting a repository?

1 Answers1