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I have been following the Answers to this question Detach subdirectory into separate Git repository and had some good successes with simple Subdirectories that are only on one branch but now I am confronted with a Subdirectory that is littered over multiple branches so a simple 

git filter-branch --subdirectory-filter SUBDIRECTORY HEAD

does not do the job.

Do I have to switch into each and every branch and run the filter-branch command or is there something that can do a blanked change through the complete history ?

Community
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AGrunewald
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1 Answers1

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The HEAD at the end of your command is specifying the ref to process. You can give it any number of other commands, including --all to specify absolutely everything, --branches to specify just branches, or --remotes to specify just remotes. You may have to prefix these options with -- to tell filter-branch that these are rev-list args. Note that --all will try to process tags explicitly, which may not be what you want. You could use --branches --remotes to specify all non-tag refs instead. You may also want to add --tag-name-filter cat to rewrite tags that point to rewritten commits - your original command will leave those tags unchanged.

Lily Ballard
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    Thanks I also discovered that you have to keep an eye on the output of filter-branch as it might not rewrite all branches and tags and those that aren't rewritten need to be deleted. – AGrunewald Dec 09 '10 at 19:30