How to create a new git repository with a file that is already in a git repository, keeping the commits

Question

I have a repository foo that contains a file Alice.js.

I want to take that file (that has lots of commits) and create a new repository only with the commits from that file.

How can I do this?

Example:

.
+- Alice.js
+- Bob.png
+- Another.file

`do magic`

.
+- Alice.js

The new repository contains only the commits from Alice.js.

nitishagar · Accepted Answer · 2014-12-25T15:25:44.433

1

You might want to try sparse checkout. The steps would be:

Create a empty repo with remote, as follows:

git init <repo>
git remote add -f origin <url>

Then, git config core.sparsecheckout true. Add files to checkout to .git/info/sparse-checkout.

And finally you can pull in the changes: git pull origin master.

edited Dec 25 '14 at 15:25

answered Dec 25 '14 at 15:20

nitishagar

And how can bring the `Alice.js` file in the new repository? – Ionică Bizău Dec 25 '14 at 15:21
working on it, will update the post you need .git to be updated – nitishagar Dec 25 '14 at 15:22
I don't get it: *Add files to checkout to `...`*. What do you mean? – Ionică Bizău Dec 25 '14 at 15:25
provide the file paths there like `echo "dir1/dir2/Alice.js" >> .git/info/sparse-checkout` – nitishagar Dec 25 '14 at 15:26
It doesn't work: I created the file `.git/info/sparse-checkout` and put there the path to the file: `../../source-repo/Alice.js`. – Ionică Bizău Dec 25 '14 at 15:30
Not the relative path on your system, path from the repo main. – nitishagar Dec 25 '14 at 15:30
Let us [continue this discussion in chat](http://chat.stackoverflow.com/rooms/67672/discussion-between-ionic-bizu-and-nash-ag). – Ionică Bizău Dec 25 '14 at 15:31
@IonicăBizău try `--depth` flag and also this post might help : http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2336580/sparse-checkout-in-git-1-7-0 – nitishagar Dec 25 '14 at 16:05
`--depth` doesn't help us because the commits are not consecutive. – Ionică Bizău Dec 25 '14 at 16:18