split directories into branches

I've got a chef cookbook repo where everyone started developing cookbooks in a single dev branch (not project specific). Minus a few edge cases, it should be fairly simple to split this up into feature branches based on /cookbooks/<feature>.

I tried: $ git filter-branch --subdirectory-filter cookbooks/<feature>-- <feature> And $ git subtree split --prefix cookbooks/<feature> -b <feature>

Which both seem to do the same thing (haven't looked at the subtree bash - guessing it does exactly the filter-branch). The issue is that it removes the directory tree (so obviously merges wouldn't work). I'm thinking some type of filter-branch --index-filter with a cherry pick (or similar) should work...?

On Mon, 4 Jul 2016 12:45:39 -0400 shawn wilson <ag4ve.us@gmail.com> wrote:

To achieve what you're after I used `git subtree split` followed by `git filter-branch --tree-filter ...` which moved all the files under the directory hierarchy `git subtree split` removes.

I'd love if `git subtree split` had an option to preserve the prefix (even better would be to have another option to rewrite the prefix) because that would greatly simplify another use case for `git subtree`: moving "a directory" with its full history from one repository into another. Presently, the user is able to split that directory out from the source repository but when they subtree-merge it back in the new repository, they are puzzled by the fact `git log` invoked on the new history with the pathname prefix designating the "inserted" directory does not traverse past the merge point which brought that directory in.

I know Git tracks content, not files (and directory) but still many folks have "stable" directories for their files, assign certain semantics to them etc. I've needed such transfers myself, and this topic has been raised more than once by folks over there on the git-users mailing list.

On Mon, Jul 4, 2016 at 1:39 PM, Konstantin Khomoutov <kostix+git@007spb.ru> wrote:

Ah, that looks like it should work - thanks

Or just an option for git {rm,mv,cp} that would allow simple rewriting of history. Ie: git mv HEAD~3.. -- foo bar (obviously not the sanest thing in most cases but would be a shorter reach than filter-branch - and if newest isn't head then it'd what? move it back during commits for who knows what - still...)

Thanks for pointing out the users list - didn't notice it and sorry for posting a user question on a dev list.

On Mon, 4 Jul 2016 14:15:58 -0400 shawn wilson <ag4ve.us@gmail.com> wrote:

[...]

[...]

I don't possess the official stance on this topic but AFAIK user-level questions are fine on this list. The git-users mailing list was created -- as I understand it -- because of three reasons: 1) it's easier to post to; 2) you don't receive all the bug reports and patch traffic irrelevant to mere mortals; 3) you have good chances to get even RTFM questions answered (mostly by those who just had RTFM recently), though I'd say stackoverflow is better at this one. ;-)

On Mon, Jul 4, 2016 at 2:29 PM, Konstantin Khomoutov <kostix+git@007spb.ru> wrote:

In that case :) ... still having issues w/ filter-branch:

$ git filter-branch --tree-filter "shopt -s extglob && mkdir -p cookbooks/base_sys && mv !(cookbooks) cookbooks/base_sys" Rewrite a90fb34230e02d9494934e5549f36bdbdd1b6ce6 (1/6) (0 seconds passed, remaining 0 predicted) /usr/local/libexec/git-core/git-filter-branch: eval: line 360: syntax error near unexpected token `(' /usr/local/libexec/git-core/git-filter-branch: eval: line 360: `shopt -s extglob && mkdir -p cookbooks/base_sys && mv !(cookbooks) cookbooks/base_sys' /usr/local/libexec/git-core/git-filter-branch: line 360: warning: syntax errors in . or eval will cause future versions of the shell to abort as Posix requires tree filter failed: shopt -s extglob && mkdir -p cookbooks/base_sys && mv !(cookbooks) cookbooks/base_sys

I'm guessing it's because of how filter-branch is eval'ing stuff. But if I do !\(cookbooks\) it interprets the '(' and ')' as text - ideas?

shawn wilson <ag4ve.us@gmail.com> writes:

extglob changes the parser, you need to set that on a separate line.

Andreas.

On Mon, Jul 4, 2016 at 6:10 PM, Andreas Schwab <schwab@linux-m68k.org> wrote:

by "separate line", I'm guessing you mean outside of the filter-branch eval? Something like this? shopt -s extglob; declare -a f=(!(cookbooks)); git filter-branch --tree-filter "mkdir -p cookbooks/base_sys && mv $f cookbooks/base_sys"

(don't have access to the repo atm and am curious if this is what you mean)

correction

On Mon, Jul 4, 2016 at 7:30 PM, shawn wilson <ag4ve.us@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, 4 Jul 2016 17:03:46 -0400 shawn wilson <ag4ve.us@gmail.com> wrote:

[...]

[...]

I used something along these lines:

  git filter-branch -f --tree-filter \
    'test -e my/new/dir || mkdir -p my/new/dir
      find . -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 \
      -type d -path ./my -prune -o -print \
      | xargs -n 30 mv -t ./my/new/dir' master 

More background on how it works [1] if you want.

1. https://groups.google.com/d/msg/git-users/hxFmfUZpj_k/9IQAQq40BwAJ