Using Git

New to Git or need a refesher?

• A tutorial introduction to Git
• A tutorial introduction to Git: part two
• A Git core tutorial for developers

If you’re on Unix, these are also likely installed as man pages:

man gittutorial
man gittutorial-2
man gitcore-tutorial

For more reading, Pro Git is available online, and Chapter 10: Git Internals is quite helpful.

Published a commit by mistake? GitHub has a decent writeup on that:

• Removing sensitive data from a repository

How To Extract a Module From an Existing Repo

The following are the steps I used for creating medic-smsparser based off medic.

First git clone using a URL scheme rather than plain file system path otherwise you will get hard links instead of a copy.

git clone git@github.com:medic/medic.git 

or

git clone file:///home/linus/dev/medic

Then compile a list of files you are interested in. If you only have a single directory you need then read about the --subdirectory-filter option of filter-branch. In this how-to I’m using a set of files:

$ cat files
packages/kujua-sms/kujua-sms/validate.js 
packages/kujua-sms/views/lib/javarosa_parser.js 
packages/kujua-sms/views/lib/mp_parser.js 
packages/kujua-sms/views/lib/smsparser.js 
packages/kujua-sms/views/lib/textforms_parser.js 
packages/kujua-sms/kujua-sms/utils.js 
tests/nodeunit/form_definitions.js 
tests/nodeunit/unit/kujua-sms/smsparser.js 
tests/nodeunit/unit/kujua-sms/smsparser_compact_textform.js 
tests/nodeunit/unit/kujua-sms/textforms_parser.js 
tests/nodeunit/unit/kujua-sms/validate.js 

Next query the git history for any file renames by using --follow:

for i in `cat files`; do \
  git log --oneline --name-only --follow --all -- "$i" | \
  egrep -v -e '^[0-9A-Fa-f]+\s'; \
done | sort | uniq > all-files

In the following commands I assume the branch we are working on is master, but this could easily be applied to any branch.

Take a note of your original commit count.

$ git rev-list master | wc -l
    6844

Run the filter on the current branch, this might take a little while:

git filter-branch -f --prune-empty --index-filter  '\
     git rm --cached -r -q -- . ; \
     git reset -q $GIT_COMMIT -- \
       lib/utils.js \
       packages/kujua-sms-import/kujua-sms-import/smsparser.js \
       packages/kujua-sms-import/views/lib/smsparser.js \
       packages/kujua-sms/kujua-sms/utils.js \
       packages/kujua-sms/kujua-sms/validate.js \
       packages/kujua-sms/tests/kujua-sms/smsparser.js \
       packages/kujua-sms/tests/kujua-sms/smsparser_compact_textform.js \
       packages/kujua-sms/tests/kujua-sms/textforms_parser.js \
       packages/kujua-sms/tests/kujua-sms/validate.js \
       packages/kujua-sms/views/lib/javarosa_parser.js \
       packages/kujua-sms/views/lib/mp_parser.js \
       packages/kujua-sms/views/lib/smsparser.js \
       packages/kujua-sms/views/lib/textforms_parser.js \
       tests/nodeunit/form_definitions.js \
       tests/nodeunit/unit/kujua-sms/smsparser.js \
       tests/nodeunit/unit/kujua-sms/smsparser_compact_textform.js \
       tests/nodeunit/unit/kujua-sms/textforms_parser.js \
       tests/nodeunit/unit/kujua-sms/validate.js tests/smsparser.js \
       views/lib/smsparser.js \
' -- --all

Nice, less commits!

$ git rev-list master | wc -l
     461

Peruse git log a bit and do a few spot checks to see if things look right. The commit hashes have been rewritten and should only include commits where the files listed above were affected.

$ git log
$ git show d3b2be79

But if we query on all refs (branches/tags) our rev list is still large, hrm…

$ git rev-list --all | wc -l
    7664

Local repo is also still larger than expected.

$ du -hs .git
 41M	.git

How many branches and tags do we have? Yikes, we’ve been busy.

$ git for-each-ref | wc -l
     183

Ok, we still have some work to do, lots of refs/tags/branches still holding on to trees!

First order of business is to say goodbye to the origin remote, we no longer call that home.

git remote rm origin
rm -rf .git/refs/original/ .git/refs/remotes/ .git/*_HEAD .git/logs/

Now delete all related branches and tags:

git for-each-ref --format="%(refname)" refs/original/ refs/tags | \
  xargs -n1 git update-ref -d

One ferocious garbage collection incantation:

$ git -c gc.reflogExpire=0 -c gc.reflogExpireUnreachable=0 -c gc.rerereresolved=0 \
    -c gc.rerereunresolved=0 -c gc.pruneExpire=now gc --aggressive

A basic check shows no errors:

$ git fsck --full
Checking object directories: 100% (256/256), done.
Checking objects: 100% (2064/2064), done.

Look Ma, I’m all cleaned up!

$ git for-each-ref
dbcc2677aa56c40fbf83d72e6e413b86d3b2be79 commit refs/heads/master
$ git rev-list --all | wc -l
     461
$ du -hs .git
384K	.git

Maybe have a play now and make sure things look right to you. Then publish your new repo!

$ git remote add origin git@github.com:medic/medic-smsparser.git
$ git push origin master

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