Separate each commit by file?

Question

I have accumulated a lot of git for my project. As a first step in clearing the repo up, I would like to split each commit into two commits: one that only applies to a specific file / some / directory / file, and the other that deals with everything else.

Since the git story is quite long, I would like to avoid this manually.

Some approaches that I was thinking about (but have not really tried):

• using git rebase --exec with a script that does the splitting.
• using filter-branch . (not familiar with this tool)

However, since this seems like a fairly common problem to me, it seemed to me that I would check here before trying to invent a wheel. Is there any automated way to do this?

Answer 1

You are on the way, what you have tried is the way to do it.
As you know, you have 2 main options:

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git rebase -i aka: squash (manual procedure)

 // Manipulate any commit by editing it and commitign again git rebase -i HEAD~X 

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Since the git story is quite long, I would like to avoid this manually.

git filter branch

• Read this article that addresses your issue How to break a repository: git path

• git filter-branch will be executed on every commit specified in this state, and then you can do whatever you want ( via a script ), and not manually.

• Here is another very useful article on filter-branch

• Split a subfolder into a new repository

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Example

 // Remove any given file from commits // Now you can commit it again into a new commit git filter-branch --tree-filter 'rm -f <file name> HEAD