---
aliases:
- /2022/09/migrate-fastpages-quarto-preserve-history
date: '2022-09-27'
layout: post
title: Migrate from fastpages to quarto preserving git history

---

Most of my blog posts are in Markdown...however, there are cases where
plotting and code are very important, and nothing beats a Jupyter Notebook
for that.

This blog was based on `fastpages`, a static blog generator by `fast.ai`.
Unfortunately they are discontinuing it and they recommended to migrate
to [Quarto](https://quarto.org), so here we are.

[Hamel Husain](https://twitter.com/HamelHusain) wrote a great tutorial on
how to migrate from Fastpages to Quarto (and saved me so much work):

<https://nbdev.fast.ai/tutorials/blogging.html#migrating-from-fastpages>

Following I describe a couple of tips that were useful for my migration.

## Preserve git history

I wanted to keep the commit history of my blog, so I replaced this step:

```
cp -r ../blog/_notebooks/* posts
cp -r ../blog/_posts/* posts
```

with a more complicated procedure based on `git filter-branch`.
`git` expertise recommended, continue at your own risk. 

I was inspired by [this tutorial about `git`](https://medium.com/@ayushya/move-directory-from-one-repository-to-another-preserving-git-history-d210fa049d4b), even if I simplified a bit the procedure.

After we initialize the website/blog based on quarto, we commit it to the `main` branch of the repository (for the new blog).

* In the same repository we create another branch which points to the old fastpages-powered blog:

```
git remote add old git@github.com:you/yourfastpagesrepo.git
git fetch old
git checkout -b oldposts old/master
```

* Then we only keep the history of the `_posts` folder

    git filter-branch --subdirectory-filter _posts  -- --all

* Finally we move it into a folder

    mkdir oldposts
    mv * oldposts
    git add .
    git commit -m "move posts into folder"

* Now we can merge it back into the `main` branch

```
git checkout main
git merge oldposts --allow-unrelated-histories
git mv oldposts/* posts/
```

* If necessary, repeat this step with the `_notebooks` folder

## No categories in URL

In my old blog I didn't have categories in my URL, so the aliases generated by
`nbdev_migrate` were wrong.

I modified `migrate.py` in my `nbdev` install.

In `_fp_convert`, I modified the line about aliases into:

    fm['aliases'] = [f'{fs'}]

## Screenshots of the old blog

Sometimes I get nostalgic.

![Screenshot of old blog](fastpages_zoncadev_1.png)
![Screenshot of old blog](fastpages_zoncadev_2.png)
![Screenshot of old blog](fastpages_zoncadev_3.png)