My Git repository is in the wrong root directory. Can I move it? (../ intead of ./)

Question

Somehow when I 'git init'ed my latest project a month or so ago I ran the command in the directory one directory higher than the root of my project.

So my repository is in the ./project directory and not the ./project/my-new-project directory. I don't know how I didn't realize the issue earlier, but I just never looked for the .git directory until now.

Is there a way, without killing my project, to move the repository to the proper directory and then tell git what the new base of the project is? Just moving the directory doesn't work. Git thinks all files have been deleted.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Use git-mv to move your files "up" to the proper location, then git-rm the "my-new-project" directory.

Answer 2

Probably the simplest thing, unless you have already created some history you want to save, would be to just delete the .git subdirectory and redo the init in the correct directory.

Answer 3

git filter-branch lets you rewrite history in that way. The git filter-branch man page even has your case as an example:

To rewrite the repository to look as if foodir/ had been its project root, and discard all other history:

git filter-branch --subdirectory-filter foodir -- --all

You probably want to git clone the repo into a new subdirectory before (or after?) the git filter-branch run. (Cloning before filter-branch and running the filter-branch on the new clone would have the advantage of leaving the original .git/ dir in place as a backup in case something goes wrong.)

Answer 4

I had the opposite problem - had to shift the git root to the parent directory (from project/src to project) To my extreme surprise, the following worked!!

src$ mv .git ../ 
src$ cd ..
project$ git add src
project$ git commit -a

git cleverly detected that all the new files were renamed versions of old ones and no history was lost

You can try something similar... move the .git folder and add the files again before committing