Another way to make a directory stay (almost) empty (in the repository) is to create a .gitignore
file inside that directory that contains these four lines:
# Ignore everything in this directory
*
# Except this file
!.gitignore
Then you don't have to get the order right the way that you have to do in m104's solution.
This also gives the benefit that files in that directory won't show up as "untracked" when you do a git status.
Making @GreenAsJade's comment persistent:
I think it's worth noting that this solution does precisely what the question asked for, but is not perhaps what many people looking at this question will have been looking for. This solution guarantees that the directory remains empty. It says "I truly never want files checked in here". As opposed to "I don't have any files to check in here, yet, but I need the directory here, files may be coming later".
Try: git mergetool
It opens a GUI that steps you through each conflict, and you get to choose how to merge. Sometimes it requires a bit of hand editing afterwards, but usually it's enough by itself. It is much better than doing the whole thing by hand certainly.
As per Josh Glover's comment:
The command
doesn't necessarily open a GUI unless you install one. Running git mergetool
for me resulted in vimdiff
being used. You can install
one of the following tools to use it instead: meld
, opendiff
,
kdiff3
, tkdiff
, xxdiff
, tortoisemerge
, gvimdiff
, diffuse
,
ecmerge
, p4merge
, araxis
, vimdiff
, emerge
.
Below is the sample procedure to use vimdiff
for resolve merge conflicts. Based on this link
Step 1: Run following commands in your terminal
git config merge.tool vimdiff
git config merge.conflictstyle diff3
git config mergetool.prompt false
This will set vimdiff as the default merge tool.
Step 2: Run following command in terminal
git mergetool
Step 3: You will see a vimdiff display in following format
╔═══════╦══════╦════════╗
║ ║ ║ ║
║ LOCAL ║ BASE ║ REMOTE ║
║ ║ ║ ║
╠═══════╩══════╩════════╣
║ ║
║ MERGED ║
║ ║
╚═══════════════════════╝
These 4 views are
LOCAL – this is file from the current branch
BASE – common ancestor, how file looked before both changes
REMOTE – file you are merging into your branch
MERGED – merge result, this is what gets saved in the repo
You can navigate among these views using ctrl+w. You can directly reach MERGED view using ctrl+w followed by j.
More information about vimdiff navigation is here and here.
Step 4. You could edit the MERGED view the following way
If you want to get changes from REMOTE
:diffg RE
If you want to get changes from BASE
:diffg BA
If you want to get changes from LOCAL
:diffg LO
Step 5. Save, Exit, Commit and Clean up
:wqa
save and exit from vi
git commit -m "message"
git clean
Remove extra files (e.g. *.orig) created by diff tool.
Best Answer
The Easy Way™
It turns out that this is such a common and useful practice that the overlords of Git made it really easy, but you have to have a newer version of Git (>= 1.7.11 May 2012). See the appendix for how to install the latest Git. Also, there's a real-world example in the walkthrough below.
Prepare the old repo
Note:
<name-of-folder>
must NOT contain leading or trailing characters. For instance, the folder namedsubproject
MUST be passed assubproject
, NOT./subproject/
Note for Windows users: When your folder depth is > 1,
<name-of-folder>
must have *nix style folder separator (/). For instance, the folder namedpath1\path2\subproject
MUST be passed aspath1/path2/subproject
Create the new repo
Link the new repo to GitHub or wherever
Cleanup inside
<big-repo>
, if desiredNote: This leaves all the historical references in the repository. See the Appendix below if you're actually concerned about having committed a password or you need to decreasing the file size of your
.git
folder.Walkthrough
These are the same steps as above, but following my exact steps for my repository instead of using
<meta-named-things>
.Here's a project I have for implementing JavaScript browser modules in node:
I want to split out a single folder,
btoa
, into a separate Git repositoryI now have a new branch,
btoa-only
, that only has commits forbtoa
and I want to create a new repository.Next, I create a new repo on GitHub or Bitbucket, or whatever and add it as the
origin
Happy day!
Note: If you created a repo with a
README.md
,.gitignore
andLICENSE
, you will need to pull first:Lastly, I'll want to remove the folder from the bigger repo
Appendix
Latest Git on macOS
To get the latest version of Git using Homebrew:
Latest Git on Ubuntu
If that doesn't work (you have a very old version of Ubuntu), try
If that still doesn't work, try
Thanks to rui.araujo from the comments.
Clearing your history
By default removing files from Git doesn't actually remove them, it just commits that they aren't there anymore. If you want to actually remove the historical references (i.e. you committed a password), you need to do this:
After that, you can check that your file or folder no longer shows up in the Git history at all
However, you can't "push" deletes to GitHub and the like. If you try, you'll get an error and you'll have to
git pull
before you cangit push
- and then you're back to having everything in your history.So if you want to delete history from the "origin" - meaning to delete it from GitHub, Bitbucket, etc - you'll need to delete the repo and re-push a pruned copy of the repo. But wait - there's more! - if you're really concerned about getting rid of a password or something like that you'll need to prune the backup (see below).
Making
.git
smallerThe aforementioned delete history command still leaves behind a bunch of backup files - because Git is all too kind in helping you to not ruin your repo by accident. It will eventually delete orphaned files over the days and months, but it leaves them there for a while in case you realize that you accidentally deleted something you didn't want to.
So if you really want to empty the trash to reduce the clone size of a repo immediately you have to do all of this really weird stuff:
That said, I'd recommend not performing these steps unless you know that you need to - just in case you did prune the wrong subdirectory, y'know? The backup files shouldn't get cloned when you push the repo, they'll just be in your local copy.
Credit