How can I modify the file path in a set of Git patches?

Question

I\'m working on a Git repo that\'s been pulled from an SVN repo using git svn. Many moons ago, the SVN repo was created from a source tarball of the original (u

Answer 1

I had to do something very similar once, wasn't pretty but it was manageable. What I ended up doing was:

git format-patch  --stdout > patches-for-upstream.mbox
$EDITOR patches-for-upstream.mbox

Inside the editor, I looked at which bits were common and needed changed to make "git am" do what I wanted. That turned out to be three lines, per file committed in each commit:

• the line starting with diff --git a/path/to/file b/path/to/file
• the line starting with --- a/path/to/file
• the line starting with +++ b/path/to/file

What the editor needs to do at this point is to go through these kind of lines and make the changes that you know are necessary to have all the patches apply to the other Git repository.

I did that in Vim, using three quickly typed macroes, YMMV. Something along the lines of:

• go to next line starting with diff --git a/
• go forward to that slash after the a
• change the path as you need it to be
• go forward to the slash after the b/ (forward to next space from the a file, then /)
• change the path in the same way as a
• next line (the ---)
• go forward to a/
• change the path
• next line (the +++)
• go forward to b/
• change the path

Repeat until the file's done. In Vim it was a matter of getting it in a macro once (qqq), trying it out once (@q) and then doing it for the whole file (999@q).

Save the file, go in the other Git repo, and try to git am it.