git-internals-pdf VS git-filter-repo

For me the Peepcode Git Internals book was a great peek under the hood. I went from "Git has a lot of magical incantations" to "Git is pretty simple and I could probably build a version of it".

I generally recommend the Peepcode Git Internals book. The first half explains the internals of how Git works, and the second half is a command reference.

Once you get the hang of basic Git operations, you should look into how Git works under the hood. Git Internals helped me a lot on this.

I often recommend the Peepcode Git Internals book. The first half talks about how Git works internally. The second half is a "how to use Git" tutorial. I think understanding the internals (which aren't really that complicated) can really help to demystify Git.

Conceptually, Git's not really all that complicated. I always recommend people to read the Peepcode Git Internals book (originally $9, now free): https://github.com/pluralsight/git-internals-pdf/blob/master/drafts/peepcode-git.pdf

Check out this page if you haven't yet (alternatively, direct link to the PDF.) I hear it's all good, but the Understanding Git chapter is the one I'd specifically point you to.

This tool is not only faster but also safer than git filter-branch. It's specifically designed to handle repository history rewriting with better safety guarantees and performance. More details here.

filter-repo is the recommended way these days:

https://github.com/newren/git-filter-repo

Install git-filter-repo: tool used to rewrite the git repository history.

**WARNING**: git-filter-branch has a glut of gotchas generating mangled history rewrites. Hit Ctrl-C before proceeding to abort, then use an alternative filtering tool such as 'git filter-repo' (https://github.com/newren/git-filter-repo/) instead. See the filter-branch manual page for more details; to squelch this warning, set FILTER_BRANCH_SQUELCH_WARNING=1. Proceeding with filter-branch... Rewrite a3a48b09e282854c80bf4ad02a017e249e161fd8 (2/8) (0 seconds passed, remaining 0 predicted) rm 'config.js' Rewrite 6e788e83a338e45b348d93d682b32c816ee2fbff (3/8) (0 seconds passed, remaining 0 predicted) rm 'config.js' Rewrite 7a378a0145bce70bea213ca5f9062138544db5f2 (4/8) (0 seconds passed, remaining 0 predicted) rm 'config.js' Rewrite 0637c9659623644cfceb35be10f2a1fe5c468e04 (5/8) (0 seconds passed, remaining 0 predicted) rm 'config.js' Rewrite 6c421eb99adc6b987cff7f3cada31e9313638072 (6/8) (0 seconds passed, remaining 0 predicted) rm 'config.js' Rewrite 98001e5b97270efa4a8ab5bd0452be56dd76883d (7/8) (0 seconds passed, remaining 0 predicted) rm 'config.js' Rewrite 2ca4e161a4af2b8f38c46faf848fdbb3e550f23c (8/8) (0 seconds passed, remaining 0 predicted) rm 'config.js' Ref 'refs/heads/secret_keys' was rewritten.

Yup you need https://github.com/newren/git-filter-repo Take a look at https://github.com/newren/git-filter-repo/blob/main/INSTALL.md for instructions

git filter-repo: a third-party command actually, as a replacement to Git's own filter-branch, that allows rewriting the whole history of a repository to remove a mistakenly added file, or help extract part of the repository to another.

I needed to archive some old repositories into a monorepo and of course I gave myself the requirement of maintaining git history, in some way. I tried a couple of solutions but it wasn't until I stumbled upon the git-filter-repo project at https://github.com/newren/git-filter-repo and another article which I've since lost (which was badly documented anyway) that I was able to figure out how to do this.