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I have a git repository with >100 commits that I initialized awhile back in the following path:

/Users/myusername/

However, all of my commits are actually for files in the path:

/Users/myusername/excess/folders/not/requiring/version/control/project_root/

I should have initialized the repository in project_root/, because I don't need to version control anything in the upper directories.

Is there any easy way of changing the path of my repository so that the top level of the repository is project_root/ while also preserving my version history as it is? Are there any extra steps to get this reflected in my remote repository as well or do I just commit and push after making the change?

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  • Where is it now? In control/? Commented May 25, 2017 at 23:22
  • @ElpieKay the repository is currently in ~ unfortunately, although all of the commits are for files and folders inside project_root/. I just made some edits which hopefully clarify. Commented May 25, 2017 at 23:24

1 Answer 1

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If something goes wrong, you can delete the copied .git* files and start over. Here is what you can do:

$ cp -r .git* path/to/project_root/ $ cd path/to/project_root/ $ git add -A .

When you call git status, all you should see are renames and removes now. If all looks good, you can delete .git* in the previous root.

Also beware that any files existed in history will remain there, that requires another operation to clean up if you have credential files etc.

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2 Comments

One issue is that within excess/folders/not/requiring/version/control/ there is a whole lot of stuff that I need to keep so I can't delete that. I am updating my question to reflect this and other contraints.
Yes, and I missed another point in your question. I will update it shortly.

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