How to split out pieces of a file while preserving git line history: The hard way with commit-tree

Raymond

September 17th, 2019

Last time, we looked at how to split a single file into multiple files while preserving line history. A related scenario is where you want to extract some pieces of a file into separate files, but leave some pieces behind.

Let’s use the same scratch repo we had last time. You can follow the same copy/paste script, or you can take your existing scratch repo and git reset --hard ready to get it back into its “ready to start experimenting” state.

First, we’re going to do things the hard (but more information-theoretically correct) way, and then we’ll develop a simpler alternative that gets the same result, though through some potentially-confusing intermediate steps.

Okay, to do things the hard way, we split out each file in its own branch.

git checkout -b f2f git mv foods fruits git commit --author="Greg <greg>" -m "create fruits from foods"

We start by renaming foods to fruits . This ensures that when git traces the history of the fruits file, it will follow the history back into the foods file.

Next, we split the fruits file back into two files: The fruits stay in the fruits file, and the rest go back into the foods file.

>foods echo celery >>foods echo cheese >>foods echo eggs >>foods echo lettuce >>foods echo milk >>foods echo peas git add foods >fruits echo apple >>fruits echo grape >>fruits echo orange git commit --author="Greg <greg>" -am "split fruits from foods" git checkout -

Repeat for the other files you want to split out. Let’s say we also want to split out the veggies.

git checkout -b f2v git mv foods veggies git commit --author="Greg <greg>" -m "create veggies from foods" >foods echo apple >>foods echo cheese >>foods echo eggs >>foods echo grape >>foods echo milk >>foods echo orange git add foods >veggies echo celery >>veggies echo lettuce >>veggies echo peas git commit --author="Greg <greg>" -am "split veggies from foods" git checkout -

Then we octopus the branches together. However, the octopus will fail because the changes don’t merge cleanly, so we’ll have to do a manual octopus, like we did before.

>foods echo cheese >>foods echo eggs >>foods echo milk >fruits echo apple >>fruits echo grape >>fruits echo orange >veggies echo celery >>veggies echo lettuce >>veggies echo peas git add foods fruits veggies git write-tree

The git write-tree will emit a tree that represents the state of the index. We set up the index so that it contains the desired final state: The fruits have been put into fruits , the veggies into veggies , and the leftovers stay in foods .

Now to do the manual octopus merge.

git commit-tree 〈tree-hash〉 -p HEAD -p f2f -p f2v -m "split out fruits and veggies from foods"

The git commit-tree will print a hash. This is the commit that is the result of the octopus merge. We can fast-forward to it.

git merge --ff-only 〈commit-hash〉

Okay, let’s see what we ended up with.

git blame fruits ^e7a114d foods (Alice 2019-09-16 07:00:00 -0700 1) apple 86348be4 foods (Bob 2019-09-16 07:00:01 -0700 2) grape 34eb5bd1 foods (Carol 2019-09-16 07:00:02 -0700 3) orange git blame veggies ^e7a114d foods (Alice 2019-09-16 07:00:00 -0700 1) celery 86348be4 foods (Bob 2019-09-16 07:00:01 -0700 2) lettuce 34eb5bd1 foods (Carol 2019-09-16 07:00:02 -0700 3) peas git blame foods ^e7a114d (Alice 2019-09-16 07:00:00 -0700 1) cheese 86348be4 (Bob 2019-09-16 07:00:01 -0700 2) eggs 34eb5bd1 (Carol 2019-09-16 07:00:02 -0700 3) milk

Next time, we’ll look at how to do this the easy way.