Git And GitHub

Git and GitHub tooling sits alongside a working guide to rewriting repository history with git filter-repo. The tools list covers a Git-compatible version control system, FTP deployment, self-hosted servers, commit hooks, and a versioned database. A section on GitHub Actions points to a runner that executes workflows locally. The guide explains what filter-repo does, how it compares with filter-branch and BFG, and shows commands for stripping paths, rewriting authors and splitting a subdirectory.

Resources

Git Workflows: Git workflow models (Trunk Flow, Forking Flow)

Tools

jj - A Git-compatible VCS that is both simple and powerful: https://github.com/jj-vcs/jj
Git FTP: https://github.com/git-ftp/git-ftp

Self-Hosted Git Server

Git Hooks

https://github.com/evilmartians/lefthook

Git for Data

dolt: https://github.com/dolthub/dolt

GitHub Actions

github-local-actions: Tool to run GitHub Actions workflows locally for testing and debugging. #GitHubActions #CI/CD

Commands

Git filter-repo

git filter-repo is a powerful tool used to replace git filter-branch and BFG Repo-Cleaner, letting you manipulate and rewrite a Git repository's history more safely and efficiently.

Main Uses of `git filter-repo`

Remove files/directories from the entire Git history.
Change usernames and emails in the commit history.
Move content from one directory into another across the whole history.
Filter commits by certain conditions (content, time, author, etc.).
Split a subdirectory into a separate repository.

Why Use `git filter-repo` Instead of `git filter-branch` or BFG?

Tool	Performance	Ease of use	Flexibility
`git filter-branch`	Slow	Hard	High
BFG Repo-Cleaner	Fast	Easy	Limited
`git filter-repo`	Very fast	Easy	Very flexible

📦 Installing `git filter-repo`

# On a system with pip:
pip install git-filter-repo

# Or from source:
git clone https://github.com/newren/git-filter-repo.git
cd git-filter-repo
make prefix=/usr/local install

Note: Back up your repository before using it, because this operation permanently changes the commit history.

🔧 Practical Examples

Remove the entire secrets/ directory from every commit:

git filter-repo --path secrets/ --invert-paths

Change author names and emails:

git filter-repo --mailmap my-mailmap.txt

With the contents of my-mailmap.txt:

Old Name <old@email.com> <==> New Name <new@email.com>

Split the src/projectA directory into its own repo:

git filter-repo --subdirectory-filter src/projectA

The tools sit next to a guide for rewriting history with git filter-repo. jj is a Git-compatible version control system, simple and powerful. Git FTP is the deployment tool. soft-serve and gogs are the self-hosted servers. lefthook is the hook tool. dolt is the versioned database. github-local-actions runs GitHub Actions workflows locally for testing and debugging. git filter-repo replaces git filter-branch and BFG Repo-Cleaner. The table calls filter-branch slow and hard. It calls BFG fast but limited. It calls filter-repo very fast, easy, and very flexible. You can remove a file or directory from every commit. You can change names and emails, or split a subdirectory into its own repository. Install with pip install git-filter-repo, or clone the newren source and run make prefix=/usr/local install. Back up first, because the rewrite permanently changes commit history. One example strips secrets/ with --invert-paths.

See also: Git Workflows · Developer Tools And Environments