git-subcopy

A way to include single files or directories from large git repositories. Think of it as a crappy clone of git subtree, but with the ability to hand-pick out what you want.

Why this exists

Pick your poison:

• I hate monorepos! => I'm not a huge fan of them personally, and this is a good reason why. Sometimes you just want to modify one component of something, and not have a submodule linking the entire repository for everyone building your code to download. This will let you copy separate components from a monorepo, or if you truly want to follow the unix philosophy, make a separate repository from the components you need and them submodule those in.

• I love monorepos! => Good for you! This tool will let you selectively include code into your repository while still not making it too bloaty. You won't have to make more than one repository even though you want to fork some external project, and your users won't have to download any submodules.

• I don't have an opinion on monorepos => Still, this tool is pretty cool and you should try it just because :)

State of the project

This is definitely not stable, both the library interface and the CLI interface are both a little hairy. In general, consider this either an alpha tool or just a proof of concept. The good news is, since all the code is being copied over and checked into git, you'll never have to worry about any loss. You should be able to replace this tool with another later if it's superseded, as all the data like your base revision is right there in plain text.

Usage

Here's an example screencast of me messing around with the tool minutes after the initial version was completed:

Installation

I recommend installing this project (or any project!) using the Nix package manager. It will automatically fetch all native dependencies for you so you only need to run the following.

nix-env -if https://gitlab.com/jD91mZM2/git-subcopy/-/archive/master.tar.gz

Alternatively, you can manually make sure you have rust, a C compiler, and openssl installed and then use the cargo package manager to fetch this project.

cargo install git-subcopy