Looking at my code base, I knew I initiated my repo with just the frontend code, thinking that I will have the backend in another repo. But I changed my plan, I just wanted a mono repo finally to include both front and back, then I did a naive move, I manually created a sub folder and manually moved (drag-and-drop) all files into this sub folder… vs code freezed for a while, then source control spitted out more than 10k changes…

Here is the hard lesson.

When we move files into a new parent folder in the Git repository, Git will detect those changes as deletions of the old files and additions of the new ones. This explains a large number of changes in the Git history, even though we only changed the file locations.

(PS. I later noticed why the Git integrated IDE couldn’t pick up those file movements, because I moved them using the window’s explorer file system, very bad move.)

And here is the solution.

Never do the manual work again, always use git mv to tell Git about the file moves explicitly.

In my situation, I wanted all my code to shift down to a sub folder called ionic-client, so in my current directory, create the sub folder by mkdir.

mkdir ionic-client

Then move all non-hidden files and directories (excluding ionic-client) into ionic-client/.

git mv !(ionic-client) ionic-client/

This pattern uses ! to negate the match for the ionic-client folder, and it will move everything except the ionic-client folder into the ionic-client folder.

Now, move the hidden files (like .gitignore, .env, etc.) but exclude the .git directory

 git mv .!(git) ionic-client/

Above all, extended globbing may be needed, enable it in the shell if not yet, as extended globbing allows advanced patterns like !(...) (exclude matches).

shopt -s extglob

I actually wanted to move back the README to the root level, again, always use git mv.

git mv ionic-client/README.md .

That’s all, I now see the clean git history, and all files are marked as R (Renamed) instead of D (Deleted) and A (Added). By marking it as a rename, Git preserves the file’s history (e.g., commits that previously modified it). However, if the files are moved by drag and drop or copy paste, Git will track this as D (Deleted) and A (Added), and the file’s history would be lost.