Re: collapsing old git history to reduce repo size, while preserving commit #s and tags

From: Jakub Narębski <jnareb@gmail.com>
Date: Oct 30, 2013, 15:55 UTC
Message-ID: <52712BF2.2080409@gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <CAJSXqrrMCWmRBoRNCLuD6DvU=CSk+MVGrSOCeOROROEaKouVKQ@mail.gmail.com>

On 2013-10-30 08:52, Stas Cherkassky wrote:

>
> Shallow clone (if that's what you meant) is not suitable because it
> doesn't allow to push/pull to/from this shallow repository.

Still? I think there were some work on making shallow clone to allowing push/pull to/from it.

Show 5 quoted lines

> I understand that generally git is designed to preserve the history.
> But the problem is real,  and probably is not unique to our project.
> The fact that there ARE some ways to modify history (collapse commits,
> rebase, filter-branch) made me hopeful that what I need is also
> possible..

By the very nature of git, namely that the 'parent' link to previous (as in: this is based on it) commit or commits, is SHA-1 of said commit, and SHA-1 identifier of commit is based on contents including 'parent' field.

Both rebase and filter-branch _rewrite_ history (i.e. make modified copy of history, and let you replace old history by new).

You could try to use father or shallow clone, namely *grafts*, to 'cauterize' history, but there remains same problems as with shallow clone, perhaps with exception that git won't check things for you.

-- 
Jakub Narębski