Tag Archives: git

Move git subdirectory into new repo

I had a need to take a folder in one git repository and create a whole new git repository with it, preserving history for all files inside. My desire to keep git history made the process a bit more complicated than simply copying the directory into a new git repository.

First, create a new folder on the git server. I’m all command line, no GUI yet, so I need to make it a bare repository. (Thanks to geeksforgeeks on how to to do this)

#On the main git "server"
mkdir <reponame>.git
cd <reponame>.git
git init --bare

Now, on the desktop (not the git server) clone a copy of the repository with your desired folder into a new directory, remove the git origin server, then strip out everything except that directory (thanks to gbayer.com for the info)

#On the desktop
git clone <initial git repository url> <new_directory_name>
cd <new_directory_name>
git remote rm origin
git filter-branch --subdirectory-filter <directory_to_keep_history_of> -- --all

Lastly, (still on the desktop in the new repository directory) create a new origin with the path of the new repo you created above

#On the desktop, inside new_directory_name
git remote add origin <server>:<path_to_new_repo_folder>
git push --set-upstream origin master

git checkout only specific directory from repo

I have a git repo where I just wanted a specific folder, not the entire repo, cloned to one of my virtual machines. Git doesn’t handle this straightforwardly, but thanks to this article I found there is a roundabout way of doing it., by combining a git sparse checkout and a git shallow checkout.

Below are the commands to run (I ran these directly in my home directory.) Replace FOLDER with the folder from within the repository you wish to clone.

git init <repo> 
cd <repo>
git remote add origin <url to remote repo> 
git config core.sparsecheckout true 
echo "FOLDER/*" >> .git/info/sparse-checkout 
git pull --depth=1 origin master 

Success! Now this particular machine only has the folder within the repo I want, not the entire git repository.

GIT branch and merge from vs code

I’ve configured VS Code to follow git best practices when it comes to creating branches and merging via pull requests. Here are my notes:

Install gitlens plugin

To open the command pallet: F1 or Command Shift P
CP is short for Command Pallet for following commands.

CP : git clone

  • Enter <repo URL> -> select destination
  • optional: add folder to workspace (bottom right)

CP: git add remote

  • select repository -> label upstream

CP: git fetch from all remotes

CP: git create branch from

  • select repo -> provide name -> select upstream/master

Click on a file in the repo, verify you’re in your new branch (bottom left)

Publish branch to your repo:

CP: git publish branch

  • select repo -> origin

Make your changes

Commit your changes to your branch (git icon on the left – type commit message, optionally compare files) – hit check mark to commit

— your changes are committed to your personal repo branch —

Log into gitlab, go to repo, click Compare & pull request

If you ever need to remove upstream URL:

CP: git remove remote

Setup remote git repository with SSH & GIT

I wanted to set up a simple git repository to synchronize my bash scripts between a couple hosts, no fancy github or gitlab software required. These are my notes on how I got it working. Thanks to this site for the information.

On the remote host (server)

mkdir GIT_PROJECT_DIR.git
cd GIT_PROJECT_DIR.git
git init --bare

On the local hosts (client)

Create a git repository and add files to it:

cd GIT_FOLDER
git init
git add *
git commit -m "Initial commit"
git remote add origin USER@REMOTE_HOST:GIT_PROJECT_DIR.git
git push origin master
git branch --set-upstream-to=origin/master

Backup and restore docker container configurations

I came across a need to start afresh with my docker setup. I didn’t want to re-create all the port and volume mappings for my various containers. Fortunately I found a way around this by using docker-autocompose to create .yml files with all my settings and docker-compose to restore them to my new docker host.

Backup

Docker-autocompose source: https://github.com/Red5d/docker-autocompose

git clone https://github.com/Red5d/docker-autocompose.git
cd docker-autocompose
docker build -t red5d/docker-autocompose .

With docker-autocompose created you can then use it to create .yml files for each of your running containers by utilizing a simple BASH for loop:

for image in $(docker ps --format '{{.Names}}'); do docker run -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock red5d/docker-autocompose $image > $image.yml; done

Simple.

Restore

To restore, install and use docker-compose:

sudo curl -L https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/1.21.2/docker-compose-$(uname -s)-$(uname -m) -o /usr/local/bin/docker-compose
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/docker-compose

Next we use another simple for loop to go through each .yml file and import them into Docker. The sed piece escapes any $ characters in the .yml files so they will import properly.

for file in *.yml; do sed 's/\$/\$\$/g' -i $file;
docker-compose -f $file up --force-recreate -d; done

You can safely ignore the warnings about orphans.

That’s it!

Troubleshooting

ERROR: Invalid interpolation format for “environment” option in service “Transmission”: “PS1=$(whoami)@$(hostname):$(pwd)$ “

This is due to .yml files which contain unescaped $ characters.

Escape any $ with another $ using sed

sed 's/\$/\$\$/g' -i <filename>.yml

ERROR: The Compose file ‘./MariaDB.yml’ is invalid because:
MariaDB.user contains an invalid type, it should be a string

My MariaDB docker .yml file had a user: environment variable that was a number, which docker compose interpreted as a number instead of a string. I had to modify that particular .yml file and add quotes around the value that I had for the User environment variable.

Install notepadqq on Debian 8 (jessie)

Notepadqq is a version of notepad++ adapted for Linux. I love notepad++ for its powerful features and also because it’s free. Notepadqq has a ppa configured for easy installation for Ubuntu users, but for everyone else they must resort to compiling it. Fortunately it’s not too complicated. Thanks to linuxbabe for the guidance.

For Debian 8 users this is what you have to do:

sudo apt-get install qt5-qmake libqt5webkit5 libqt5svg5 coreutils libqt5webkit5-dev libqt5svg5-dev qttools5-dev-tools git
git clone https://github.com/notepadqq/notepadqq.git
cd notepadqq
./configure
make
sudo make install

After a bit of time notepadqq will be compiled and installed. That’s it!

If you are running gnome-shell or a derivative (such as cinnamon) then you can get your newly installed program to show up in the menu by pressing alt+f2, hitting r, and then hitting enter. This causes the shell to reload so it will pick up your newly installed program.