How to import existing Git repository into another?

Probably the simplest way would be to pull the XXX stuff into a branch in YYY and then merge it into master:

In YYY:

git remote add other /path/to/XXXgit fetch othergit checkout -b ZZZ other/mastermkdir ZZZgit mv stuff ZZZ/stuff                      # repeat as necessary for each file/dirgit commit -m "Moved stuff to ZZZ"git checkout master                git merge ZZZ --allow-unrelated-histories   # should add ZZZ/ to mastergit commitgit remote rm othergit branch -d ZZZ                           # to get rid of the extra branch before pushinggit push                                    # if you have a remote, that is

I actually just tried this with a couple of my repos and it works. Unlike Jörg's answer it won't let you continue to use the other repo, but I don't think you specified that anyway.

Note: Since this was originally written in 2009, git has added the subtree merge mentioned in the answer below. I would probably use that method today, although of course this method does still work.

If you want to retain the exact commit history of the second repository and therefore also retain the ability to easily merge upstream changes in the future then here is the method you want. It results in unmodified history of the subtree being imported into your repo plus one merge commit to move the merged repository to the subdirectory.

git remote add XXX_remote <path-or-url-to-XXX-repo>git fetch XXX_remotegit merge -s ours --no-commit --allow-unrelated-histories XXX_remote/mastergit read-tree --prefix=ZZZ/ -u XXX_remote/mastergit commit -m "Imported XXX as a subtree."

You can track upstream changes like so:

git pull -s subtree XXX_remote master

Git figures out on its own where the roots are before doing the merge, so you don't need to specify the prefix on subsequent merges.

The downside is that in the merged history the files are unprefixed (not in a subdirectory). As a result git log ZZZ/a will show you all the changes (if any) except those in the merged history. You can do:

git log --follow -- a

but that won't show the changes other then in the merged history.

In other words, if you don't change ZZZ's files in repository XXX, then you need to specify --follow and an unprefixed path. If you change them in both repositories, then you have 2 commands, none of which shows all the changes.

Git versions before 2.9: You don’t need to pass the --allow-unrelated-histories option to git merge.

The method in the other answer that uses read-tree and skips the merge -s ours step is effectively no different than copying the files with cp and committing the result.

Original source was from github's "Subtree Merge" help article. And another useful link.

git-subtree is a script designed for exactly this use case of merging multiple repositories into one while preserving history (and/or splitting history of subtrees, though that seems to be irrelevant to this question). It is distributed as part of the git tree since release 1.7.11.

To merge a repository <repo> at revision <rev> as subdirectory <prefix>, use git subtree add as follows:

git subtree add -P <prefix> <repo> <rev>

git-subtree implements the subtree merge strategy in a more user friendly manner.

For your case, inside repository YYY, you would run:

git subtree add -P ZZZ /path/to/XXX.git master

The downside is that in the merged history the files are unprefixed (not in a subdirectory). As a result git log ZZZ/a will show you all the changes (if any) except those in the merged history. You can do:

git log --follow -- a

but that won't show the changes other then in the merged history.

In other words, if you don't change ZZZ's files in repository XXX, then you need to specify --follow and an unprefixed path. If you change them in both repositories, then you have 2 commands, none of which shows all the changes.

More on it here.