I have read and used git subtree functionality a lot.
Especially are useful these links
Add subdirectory of remote repo with git-subtree
If I have main repo:
base/folder1
base/folder2
And I have sub repo (repo2):
base/folder3
base/folder4
I cant change the structure of the folders, as this is inherit from some other SCM platform, and build process expects this folder structure.
How I can use git-subtree to have both of the subfolders (folder3 and folder4) inside my main repo and in the same time to track changes from a subrepo? (that is where git subtree should come into place)
I couldn’t find way for this.
Ideally with sub-tree I would like to accomplish a repo with this structure:
base/folder1
base/folder2
base/folder3
base/folder4
I have tried with:
$ git subtree add --prefix . repo2 master --squash
prefix '.' already exists.
$ git subtree add --prefix base repo2 master --squash
prefix 'base' already exists.
If I add into some other folder like “repo2”
$ git subtree add --prefix repo2 repo2 master --squash
Then this would work but then I would have structure:
base/folder1
base/folder2
base/repo2/folder3
base/repo2/folder4
which is NOT what I want.
Is this possible to achieve with git and subtree functionality?
Thank you
7
I don’t know any simple way to do what you want. Git doesn’t really allow working with separate subdirectories. The entity is the entire repository, the unit of work is a commit which includes a copy of the entire working tree. git subtree allows to export/import subdirectories but you need intermediate repositories to store them.
You can export subfolders from repo2 but you cannot do that in one step — git subtree allows only one prefix. So you need to create two empty intermediate repositories. Let’s say their hosting is at <URL>; lets name these new repos r2f3 and r2f4 to remember their content came from repo2 folder3 and f…4 (if <URL> is actually local filesystem or SSH-accessed filesystem the new repos must be bare because you will push into them; repos at Git hostings are always bare).
First you export subfolders from repo2 into these new repositories:
$ cd repo2
$ git subtree push -P base/folder3 <URL>:r2f3
$ git subtree push -P base/folder4 <URL>:r2f4
The very repo2 stays unchanged except for two new branches, the result of git subtree split ran by git subtree push.
Now import them into repo1:
$ cd repo1
$ git subtree add -P base/folder3 <URL>:r2f3
$ git subtree add -P base/folder4 <URL>:r2f4
When you have new commits in repo2 you do re-export and re-import:
$ cd repo2
$ git subtree push -P base/folder3 <URL>:r2f3
$ cd repo1
$ git subtree pull -P base/folder3 <URL>:r2f3
When you have new commits in repo1 that touch folder3 or 4 you do re-export and re-import in the reverse direction:
$ cd repo1
$ git subtree push -P base/folder4 <URL>:r2f4
$ cd repo2
$ git subtree pull -P base/folder4 <URL>:r2f4
Cumbersome, yes. But works and could be automated with scripts.