How to merge two or more repos into a new one without losing the history of commits

Go straight to solution 🙏🏻

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Storytelling

I was working on four different repositories projects: frontend, sdk, smart contract, indexer.

But I was spending a bunch of time because the contract generates new types during the build and deployment using typechain lib.

I needed to replace all types in the SDK and indexer project, and we realized that the frontend app will need these types as well.

This work is manually copy/paste, adapt the code with the changes, commit, and push when it happens.

So, I decided to give a try Monorepo with TurboRepo.

My idea was to merge all repos without losing the history of commits on them.

For this, with a help of my friend @rjborba we did:

created a new repo on GitHub: project using TurboRepo and their structure(apps, packages).
cloned each repo (frontend, sdk, smart contract, indexer) in another each folder (frontend2, sdk2, smart-contract2, indexer2).
removed the origin from each repo and added the origin from project.
moved the files and folders to another folder: sample: frontend2 now is frontend2/apps/ keeping only the .git folder in the root folder. sdk2 now is packages/sdk.
committed the changes in each folder, and git push --all and git pull --allow-unrelated-histories to merge and resolve conflicts.

This way I could have my Monorepo with all projects related to the history of commits in chronological order.

Technical Way

talk is cheap to show me the commands:

npx create-turbo@latest project

~/Developer/project (main) » tree -L 3 --gitignore                                                                                             tgmarinho@Thiagos-MacBook-Pro
.
├── README.md
├── apps
│   ├── docs
│   │   ├── README.md
│   │   ├── next-env.d.ts
│   │   ├── next.config.js
│   │   ├── node_modules
│   │   ├── package.json
│   │   ├── pages
│   │   └── tsconfig.json
│   └── web
│       ├── README.md
│       ├── next-env.d.ts
│       ├── next.config.js
│       ├── node_modules
│       ├── package.json
│       ├── pages
│       └── tsconfig.json
├── package.json
├── packages
│   ├── eslint-config-acme
│   │   ├── index.js
│   │   ├── node_modules
│   │   └── package.json
│   ├── tsconfig
│   │   ├── README.md
│   │   ├── base.json
│   │   ├── nextjs.json
│   │   ├── package.json
│   │   └── react-library.json
│   └── ui
│       ├── Button.tsx
│       ├── index.tsx
│       ├── node_modules
│       ├── package.json
│       └── tsconfig.json
├── turbo.json
└── yarn.lock

Then host it to the GitHub and get the origin address: git@github.com:myaccount/project.git

Clone the project frontend:

git clone git@github.com:myaccount/frontend.git frontend2
cd frontend2 && mkdir apps
mv $(ls -la) frontend2/apps/
mv frontend2/apps/.git .
git remote remove origin
git remote add origin git@github.com:myaccount/project.git
git commit -m "send the frontend to monorepo"
git fetch -a
git pull --allow-unrelated-histories
git push --all

Repeat the process to other repo - SDK:
Clone the project sdk:

git clone  git@github.com:myaccount/sdk.git sdk
cd sdk && mkdir apps
mv $(ls -la) sdk/packages/
mv sdk/packages/.git .
git remote remove origin
git remote add origin git@github.com:myaccount/project.git
git commit -m "send the sdk to monorepo"
git fetch -a
git pull --allow-unrelated-histories
git push --all

Repeat the process to other repo - INDEXER:
Clone the project indexer:

git clone git@github.com:myaccount/indexer.git indexer
cd indexer && mkdir apps
mv $(ls -la) indexer/packages/
mv indexer/packages/.git .
git remote remove origin
git remote add origin git@github.com:myaccount/project.git
git commit -m "send the sdk to monorepo"
git fetch -a
git pull --allow-unrelated-histories
git push --all

Finish ✌🏻

Ref: gist x-yuri

Thanks for reading 🚀

Thiago Marinho @tgmarinhodev