title: How to Git merge a branch that only contains a subfolder of trunk?
body: <p>I am currently working on a project using svn (server is version 1.4 which means no modern merge tools available). </p>
  
  <p>I want to merge a branch with quite a few weeks of work in it. The problem is that back when the branch was created, it was made as a copy only of a subfolder.</p>
  
  <p>Svn structure of project:</p>
  
  <pre><code>/trunk/folder1
                /file1
                /file2
         folder2
         folder3
         ...
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Now I'm struggling to merge a branch back into trunk.</p>
  
  <p>Now the problem is that the guy that created the branch only copied /trunk/folder1 and not the entire trunk. This creates a problem for git-svn, as it thinks that I created a bunch of files in the folder.</p>
  
  <pre><code> git co master
   git merge branch1
   ...
   create mode 100644 trunk/file1
   create mode 100644 trunk/file2
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>(assuming that the files were originally in <code>/trunk/folder1/file1</code>)</p>
  
  <p>The original reason i'm not using svn for this, is because of too many conflickts. (<code>svn merge</code> requires server 1.5+ and we're only on 1.4, <code>svnmerge.py</code> can only merge small chunks at a time and requires a LOT of mental overload ... i have used a half day to get only half way through)</p>
  
  <p>Using <code>git merge</code> seems promising, but at first I need to tell git to use a subfolder of my master branch as merge target. How is that done?</p>