Diverting Fork

I have a fork of a repo that has diverged.

I want to push all changes except for those that involve a particular folder.

To the original repo and rebase the fork on the old repo to ensure version control integrity.

Solution: Pushing Fork Changes to Upstream Without a Folder Using git filter-repo

Prerequisites

Install git-filter-repo if you don't have it:

pip install git-filter-repo

Verify it's available:

git filter-repo --version

Step 1: Create a Working Branch

Create a local copy of your fork's branch to rewrite — never rewrite directly on your main branch:

git checkout -b filtered-changes origin/main

Step 2: Run filter-repo to Remove the Folder

Rewrite the branch, stripping all changes to the excluded folder:

git filter-repo --path path/to/excluded-folder --invert-paths

What this does

• --path targets the specified folder
• --invert-paths inverts the selection, meaning everything except that folder is kept
• Commits that only touched the excluded folder are dropped entirely
• Commits that touched the excluded folder and other files are kept, but with the folder changes removed
• Commit hashes will all change since history is being rewritten

Step 3: Verify the Result

Check that the excluded folder doesn't appear in the rewritten history:

# Confirm the folder is absent from the working tree
ls path/to/excluded-folder  # should not exist or be empty

# Scan the entire rewritten history for any trace of the folder
git log --all --full-history -- path/to/excluded-folder
# Should return nothing

Also sanity-check the commit log looks right:

git log --oneline

Step 4: Re-add the Upstream Remote

filter-repo removes remotes as a safety measure during rewriting. Re-add them:

git remote add upstream https://github.com/original/repo.git
git remote add origin https://github.com/your-fork/repo.git

Step 5: Push to Upstream

Push the filtered branch to upstream:

git push upstream filtered-changes

Then open a pull request from filtered-changes into the upstream repo's main branch.

Step 6: Rebase Your Fork onto Upstream

Once upstream merges your PR, sync your fork so history stays clean:

git fetch upstream
git checkout main
git rebase upstream/main

Handling conflicts in the excluded folder

The excluded folder will likely conflict here since your fork still has those changes. Keep your fork's version:

# If conflicts arise:
git checkout --ours path/to/excluded-folder
git add path/to/excluded-folder
git rebase --continue

Step 7: Force Push the Fork

git push origin main --force-with-lease

--force-with-lease is preferred over --force as it will refuse to push if the remote has been updated by someone else since your last fetch, preventing accidental overwrites.

Summary

Step	Command	Purpose
Install tool	pip install git-filter-repo	Get filter-repo
Create branch	git checkout -b filtered-changes origin/main	Safe working copy
Strip folder	git filter-repo --path <folder> --invert-paths	Rewrite history
Verify	git log --all --full-history -- <folder>	Confirm folder is gone
Re-add remotes	git remote add ...	Restore after filter-repo
Push	git push upstream filtered-changes	Send to upstream
Rebase fork	git rebase upstream/main	Sync fork
Force push fork	git push origin main --force-with-lease	Update fork remote