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Is there anyway to force git to include files and directories in other repositories that are residing somewhere within the current repository?

The reason I ask is that I have a layout that is something like this:

Projects
  |- Some Project
  |   |- .git
  |- Another Project
  |   |- .git
  |- Yet Another Project
  |   |- .svn
  |- A non versioned Project
  |- etc..

Now what I want to do is git init in Projects and then run a daily cron job that pushes to a bare repository in a folder that is backed up with the following commands

...<set variables>...
git add -A
git commit -m "Automatic Update $Date $Time"
git push --mirror --repo=/backedup/Projects

My plan was to add .git, .svn, .hg, etc to .gitignore and just have this as a safety backup of the files.

Edit: I've got some great suggestions below but I am still curious about if this particular case is possible. Backing the entire folder with rdiff still means backing the inflated files onto my backup media whereas the bare repository takes 4 MB instead of 160 MB, also I just really want to know if it is possible now that I've been thinking about it or I'll lose sleep.

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so, essentially you want incremental backups of a directory containing files? why do you want to enforce "git" to do this? – akira Jul 30 '10 at 7:48
Also, be aware your cron job would push out the current working copy in each of your nested repositories. Depending on what you've been working on, this might be a step back. – Lawrence Velázquez Jul 30 '10 at 8:14
@akira The backup of a bare repository for the Projects folder would be very small and easy to send through ssh, compared to the backup of the inflated files and it would include at least a daily history of the working set. Perhaps there are a lot better applications for this that stores the data + deltas compressed my initial thought however was Git would do this incredibly well. – Don Jul 30 '10 at 9:02
2  
a) ssh has a compression option, b) an incremental backup program normally sends only differences, check out nongnu.org/rdiff-backup, c) with incremental backup you have "version history" as well, d) the point i was making is this: enveloping everything in git just because one can is not always the best solution for a problem. – akira Jul 30 '10 at 11:05
I'm well aware of most of the points you make though I have not used rdiff before, thanks a bunch for the link. I'll be sure to check it out! However I'm still curious for a solution to the question asked for various reasons so I'll leave it open. – Don Jul 30 '10 at 11:40
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2 Answers

up vote 3 down vote

Use git submodules

With submodules, you can plant repositories within other repositories without tracking specific details of the sub-repository's changes.

This feature was specifically created for dealing with projects that may rely on dependences that are tracked elsewhere.

I would give some more detailed use cases but I haven't had reason to use this particular feature yet.

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up vote 0 down vote

This particular case is not possible. And not practical.

  • Nested Git repo would be detected and the git add -A at the root directory wouldn't take into account the nested .git sub-directories.
  • .svn would work but that would need a .gitignore carefully calibrated to ignore everything else.

A separate backup job with an incremental copy over a compressed ssh, as suggested by akira in the comments, is a better solution.

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can't this be achieved via submodules perhaps? – Tobias Kienzler Sep 23 '10 at 13:34
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