Git: How to move contents of gh-pages branch to docs/ directory preserving history?

Question

So github recently implemented a feature to use the docs/ directory of master instead of gh-pages . And this is good for some use cases, such as mine.

The scenario is a git repo with a master and a gh-pages branch (the "old" way of doing github pages), and I want to move everything in the gh-pages branch to the docs/ directory in master (the "new" way of doing github pages).

I'm aware I can use git checkout master; git checkout gh-pages -- docs git checkout master; git checkout gh-pages -- docs , but this will remove history from the gh-pages files, which is undesired.

I have fiddled around with git subtree and git filter-branch , with no success.

So the question is: Is there a magic one-liner git command to move the contents of another branch into a subdirectory while keeping history?

Answer 1

git subtrees are perfect for this. You mentioned you "fiddled" with them, but did you try:

git subtree add --prefix=docs origin gh-pages

Check out my docs-subtree branch

Answer 2

I don't know if there is a one-line command, but you could try a rebase, and then merge it into master :

git checkout gh-pages
git rebase master
git checkout master
git merge --no-ff gh-pages

Answer 3

I didn't find any magic one-liner, but doing a git merge (thanks @Wikiti for inspiring me towards trying that option once again) seemed to work.

The final method I followed is not pretty, and involves running git reset a number of times.

This is not perfect, and I encourage any git experts or gitlab employees to suggest better solutions. In the hopes it will help others trying to move away from a gh-pages branch, this is how I did it:

git checkout master
git checkout -b master-docs
git merge gh-pages

# Reset the "master" files so that files deleted are left untouched by the merge
git reset src/
git checkout src/
git reset any-other-master-files
git checkout any-other-master-files

# Manually edit any conflicts, e.g. in .gitignore (with your favourite editor)
vi .gitignore
git add .gitignore
vi any-other-conflicting-files
git add any-other-conflicting-files

# Move the "gh-pages" files into "docs/" directory
mkdir docs
git mv *.md docs/
git mv *.html docs/
git mv _posts docs/
git mv _layout docs/
git mv any-other-gh-pages-files docs/

# Check that everything looks OK, there should be only files added to docs/
# If not, go through last steps again
git status

# Confirm the merge
git commit

# Push to origin
git push -u master-docs

# Go to github, make a pull req from master-docs to master for peer review

(The result doesn't look bad )