Moving the .git directory wihout moving the files

Question

I am using to track changes to some linux system files (/etc/*), I had the .git in /etc but now I decided to move it to / as I want to track files that are outside /etc (both /etc and / are in the same filesystems...), I did that and tried to re-add the same files with:

git add $(git status | awk '/deleted/ { print "etc/"$3 } ')

But it does not appear to be working as I hoped as now the are two lists one with a list of "new files" and one with a list of "deleted files", if commit now I will lose all the history for the files....

What would have been the correct steps?

Thanks! Antonio

Answer 1

Use git subtree (installation instructions if not already installed).

Create a new repository at / and merge it with the existing one in /etc:

$ cd /
$ git init
$ git subtree --prefix etc /etc master

Answer 2

Ther are similar questions on SO:

My Git repository is in the wrong root directory. Can I move it? (../ intead of ./)

Moving a git repository

And there is no way of chaning directory without losing history of files.