Split large Git repository into many smaller ones

After successfully converting an SVN repository to Git, I now have a very large Git repository that I want to break down into multiple smaller repositories and maintain history.

So, can someone help with breaking up a repo that might look like this:

MyHugeRepo/
   .git/
   DIR_A/
   DIR_B/
   DIR_1/
   DIR_2/

Into two repositories that look like this:

MyABRepo/
   .git
   DIR_A/
   DIR_B/

My12Repo/
   .git
   DIR_1/
   DIR_2/

I've tried following directions in this previous question but it doesn't really fit when trying to put multiple directories into a separate repo (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/359424/detach-subdirectory-into-separate-git-repository).

This will setup MyABRepo; you can do My12Repo similarly of course.

git clone MyHugeRepo/ MyABRepo.tmp/
cd MyABRepo.tmp
git filter-branch --prune-empty --index-filter 'git rm --cached --ignore-unmatch DIR_1/* DIR_2/*' HEAD 

A reference to .git/refs/original/refs/heads/master remains. You can remove that up with:

cd ..
git clone MyABRepo.tmp MyABRepo

If all went well you can then remove MyABRepo.tmp.

---

If for some reason you get an error regarding .git-rewrite, you can try this:

git clone MyHugeRepo/ MyABRepo.tmp/
cd MyABRepo.tmp
git filter-branch -d /tmp/git-rewrite.tmp --prune-empty --index-filter 'git rm --cached --ignore-unmatch DIR_1/* DIR_2/*' HEAD 
cd ..
git clone MyABRepo.tmp MyABRepo

This will create and use /tmp/git-rewrite.tmp as a temporary directory, instead of .git-rewrite. Naturally, you can substitute any path you wish instead of /tmp/git-rewrite.tmp, so long as you have write permission, and the directory does not already exist.

You could use git filter-branch --index-filter with git rm --cached to delete the unwanted directories from clones/copies of your original repository.

For example:

trim_repo() { : trim_repo src dst dir-to-trim-out...
  : uses printf %q: needs bash, zsh, or maybe ksh
  git clone "$1" "$2" &&
  (
    cd "$2" &&
    shift 2 &&

    : mirror original branches &&
    git checkout HEAD~0 2>/dev/null &&
    d=$(printf ' %q' "$@") &&
    git for-each-ref --shell --format='
      o=%(refname:short) b=${o#origin/} &&
      if test -n "$b" && test "$b" != HEAD; then 
        git branch --force --no-track "$b" "$o"
      fi
    ' refs/remotes/origin/ | sh -e &&
    git checkout - &&
    git remote rm origin &&

    : do the filtering &&
    git filter-branch \
      --index-filter 'git rm --ignore-unmatch --cached -r -- '"$d" \
      --tag-name-filter cat \
      --prune-empty \
      -- --all
  )
}
trim_repo MyHugeRepo MyABRepo DIR_1 DIR_2
trim_repo MyHugeRepo My12Repo DIR_A DIR_B

You will need to manually delete each repository’s unneeded branches or tags (e.g. if you had a feature-x-for-AB branch, then you probably want to delete that from the “12” repository).

The git_split project is a simple script that does exactly what you are looking for. https://github.com/vangorra/git_split

Turn git directories into their very own repositories in their own location. No subtree funny business. This script will take an existing directory in your git repository and turn that directory into an independent repository of its own. Along the way, it will copy over the entire change history for the directory you provided.

./git_split.sh <src_repo> <src_branch> <relative_dir_path> <dest_repo>
        src_repo  - The source repo to pull from.
        src_branch - The branch of the source repo to pull from. (usually master)
        relative_dir_path   - Relative path of the directory in the source repo to split.
        dest_repo - The repo to push to.

Here is a ruby script that will do it. https://gist.github.com/4341033

Thanks for your answers but I ended up just copying the repository twice then deleting the files I didn't want from each. I am going to use the filter-branch at a later date to strip out all the commits for the deleted files since they are already version controlled elsewhere.

cp -R MyHugeRepo MyABRepo
cp -R MyHugeRepo My12Repo

cd MyABRepo/
rm -Rf DIR_1/ DIR_2/
git add -A
git commit -a

This worked for what I needed.

EDIT: Of course, the same thing was done in the My12Repo against the A and B directory. This gave me two repos with identical history up to the point I deleted the unwanted directories.

Although at the time of the question utunbu's answer was best you could get, these days even git itself recommends https://github.com/newren/git-filter-repo

It is orders of magnitude faster and comparatively very easy to use

For example here you would do

git clone MyHugeRepo/ MyABRepo.tmp/
cd MyABRepo.tmp
git filter-repo --path DIR_A/ --path DIR_B/

You can see more examples at https://htmlpreview.github.io/?https://github.com/newren/git-filter-repo/blob/docs/html/git-filter-repo.html#EXAMPLES