Re: is it possible filter the revision history of a single file into another repository?

On Thursday, 18. December 2008 14:51:12 Whit Armstrong wrote:

For instance, if my repository contains foo.c, and 100 other files.

I would like to create a new and separate repository containing only
the revision history of foo.c.

Would someone mind pointing me at some documentation for this
procedure if it exists?

This worked for me:

git filter-branch --tag-name-filter cat --index-filter \
    'git ls-files -s |grep -P "\t(DIR1|DIR2)" \
    |GIT_INDEX_FILE=$GIT_INDEX_FILE.new git update-index --index-info &&
    mv $GIT_INDEX_FILE.new $GIT_INDEX_FILE' -- --all

Run "git ls-files -s" to see the output format.
Replace the "DIR1|DIR2" with "foo.c".

Later on you might want to remove empty commits from the history:
git filter-branch --tag-name-filter cat --commit-filter 'if [ z$1 = z`git rev-parse $3^{tree}` ]; then skip_commit "$@"; else git commit-tree "$@"; fi' "$@" -- --all

If you want to run two filter-branch commands in a row
or you want to free up the space in .git afterwards:

- git for-each-ref --format='%(refname)' refs/original | xargs -i git update-ref -d {}
- git reflog expire --expire=0 --all
- git repack -a -d
- git prune

Cheers,
Thomas