From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2010 05:33:04 GMT
Subject: Re: Splitting up a repository
Message-ID: <20101204053304.GA7311@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <4CF9D15D.7090001@cs.wisc.edu>

On Fri, Dec 03, 2010 at 11:27:57PM -0600, Evan Driscoll wrote:

> Say I have a repo where there are directories repo/foo, repo/bar,
> repo/baz. 'foo', 'bar', and 'baz' are loosely related -- closely enough
> that I put them together initially, but loosely enough that I now wish I
> could check out just 'repo/foo'. Since Git doesn't support partial
> checkouts (a bit annoying!), I now have to split this repository into
> separate ones. I'd of course like to keep history.
> 
> Is there a better way than making several (recursive) copies of the
> repository, deleting all but one directory in each copy, then moving the
> contents of that directory up a level? (And perhaps setting up a Git
> superproject at the original location. I do know about that.)

Rewrite the history of each directory with git-filter-branch. It even
has a "--subdirectory-filter" option that will do exactly what you want.

-Peff