[duijf]

Here's a way you can do this with git. This trick relies on `git merge --allow-unrelated-histories`.

Assuming you have repos `foo` and `bar` and want to move them to the new repo `mono`.

    $ ls
    foo
    bar
    
    # Prepare for import: we want to move all files into a new subdir `foo` so
    # we don't get conflicts later. This uses Zsh's extended globs. See
    # https://stackoverflow.com/questions/670460/move-all-files-except-one for
    # bash syntax.
    $ cd foo
    $ setopt extended_glob
    $ mkdir foo
    $ mv ^foo foo
    $ git add .
    $ git commit -m "Prepare foo for import"
    
    # Follow those "move to subdir" steps for `bar` as well.
    
    # Now make the final monorepo
    $ cd ..
    $ mkdir mono
    $ cd mono
    $ git init
    $ touch README.md
    $ git add README.md
    $ git commit -m "Initial commit in mono"
    
    $ git remote add foo ../foo
    $ git fetch foo
    $ git remote add bar ../bar
    $ git fetch bar
    
    # Substitute `main` for `master` or whatever branch you want to import.
    $ git merge --allow-unrelated-histories foo/main
    $ git merge --allow-unrelated-histories bar/main

    # Inspect the final history:
    $ git log --oneline --graph
    *   8aa67e5 (HEAD -> main) Import bar
    |\
    | * eec0abd (bar/main) Prepare bar for import
    | * 9741d6d More stuff in bar
    | * 634ba3d Initial commit bar
    *   43be6e9 Import foo
    |\
    | * d4805a0 (foo/main) Prepare foo for import
    | * 4d2ca10 More stuff in foo
    | * 72072a1 Initial commit foo
    * bfcb339 Initial commit in mono

[oftenwrong]

For the "move to subdir" step, I recommend using git-filter-repo, which should be preferred over git-filter-branch (older code snippets often use it).

Use git-filter-repo's --to-subdirectory-filter and --tag-rename:

https://github.com/newren/git-filter-repo#solving-this-with-...

[wdb]

Do you think this will speed up things? I tried the above suggestion and it's already for four hours to merge two repo's into one (3 years worth of git history)

[oftenwrong]

I am not sure; I don't know much about performance of git operations. Which step is slow? Have you figured out why? I am curious.

[wdb]

Thanks, I will give this a shot