SWGH - Split With Git History

An minimal NPX command which allows you to quickly & easily clone a file into a copy of it, retaining its git history.

It's most useful when you have a file and you want to break it up into multiple smaller files, retaining the line git history in each of them.

Usage

npx swgh <source> <destination>

Examples

npx swgh README.md README2.md

npx swgh README.md cloneWithOtherExtension.txt

npx swgh someFolder/someFile.js someOtherFolder/randomSubfolder/halfOfTheFile.ts

Let's assume you have a big file characters.js containing many functions which log a character, and you'd like to split it up into 2 files. One for consonant loggers, one for vowel loggers.

$ git blame characters.js

  ca123d function a() { console.log('a') }
  b5103d function b() { console.log('b') }
  b5103d function c() { console.log('c') }
  b5103d function d() { console.log('d') }
  ca123d function e() { console.log('e') }
  ...

Assume that in commit ca123d vowel loggers have been added and in commit b5103d consonant loggers have been added.

  $ npx swgh characters.js vowelLoggers.js

The result is characters.js and vowelLoggers.js containing the exact same code with the same git history.

Rename the original file to consonantLoggers.js

mv characters.js consonantLoggers.js

Clean up the files to represent what you initially intended:

$ git blame consonantLoggers.js

  b5103d function b() { console.log('b') }
  b5103d function c() { console.log('c') }
  b5103d function d() { console.log('d') }
  ...

$ git blame vowelLoggers.js

  ca123d function a() { console.log('a') }
  ca123d function e() { console.log('e') }
  ...

Commit your changes

$ git commit -am "Splitted up characters.js into consonantLoggers.js and vowelLoggers.js"

Caveats

• You can only use this command within a GIT repository
• You should not have any uncommitted changes. git status should say "nothing to commit, working tree clean"
• When the command is executed it will create 3-4 new commits, due the internal process