Documentation / git-svn.txton commit CodingGuidelines: Add a note to avoid assignments inside if() (0b0b8cd)
   1git-svn(1)
   2==========
   3
   4NAME
   5----
   6git-svn - Bidirectional operation between a single Subversion branch and git
   7
   8SYNOPSIS
   9--------
  10'git-svn' <command> [options] [arguments]
  11
  12DESCRIPTION
  13-----------
  14git-svn is a simple conduit for changesets between Subversion and git.
  15It is not to be confused with linkgit:git-svnimport[1], which is
  16read-only.
  17
  18git-svn was originally designed for an individual developer who wants a
  19bidirectional flow of changesets between a single branch in Subversion
  20and an arbitrary number of branches in git.  Since its inception,
  21git-svn has gained the ability to track multiple branches in a manner
  22similar to git-svnimport.
  23
  24git-svn is especially useful when it comes to tracking repositories
  25not organized in the way Subversion developers recommend (trunk,
  26branches, tags directories).
  27
  28COMMANDS
  29--------
  30--
  31
  32'init'::
  33        Initializes an empty git repository with additional
  34        metadata directories for git-svn.  The Subversion URL
  35        may be specified as a command-line argument, or as full
  36        URL arguments to -T/-t/-b.  Optionally, the target
  37        directory to operate on can be specified as a second
  38        argument.  Normally this command initializes the current
  39        directory.
  40
  41-T<trunk_subdir>;;
  42--trunk=<trunk_subdir>;;
  43-t<tags_subdir>;;
  44--tags=<tags_subdir>;;
  45-b<branches_subdir>;;
  46--branches=<branches_subdir>;;
  47-s;;
  48--stdlayout;;
  49        These are optional command-line options for init.  Each of
  50        these flags can point to a relative repository path
  51        (--tags=project/tags') or a full url
  52        (--tags=https://foo.org/project/tags). The option --stdlayout is
  53        a shorthand way of setting trunk,tags,branches as the relative paths,
  54        which is the Subversion default. If any of the other options are given
  55        as well, they take precedence.
  56--no-metadata;;
  57        Set the 'noMetadata' option in the [svn-remote] config.
  58--use-svm-props;;
  59        Set the 'useSvmProps' option in the [svn-remote] config.
  60--use-svnsync-props;;
  61        Set the 'useSvnsyncProps' option in the [svn-remote] config.
  62--rewrite-root=<URL>;;
  63        Set the 'rewriteRoot' option in the [svn-remote] config.
  64--username=<USER>;;
  65        For transports that SVN handles authentication for (http,
  66        https, and plain svn), specify the username.  For other
  67        transports (eg svn+ssh://), you must include the username in
  68        the URL, eg svn+ssh://foo@svn.bar.com/project
  69--prefix=<prefix>;;
  70        This allows one to specify a prefix which is prepended
  71        to the names of remotes if trunk/branches/tags are
  72        specified.  The prefix does not automatically include a
  73        trailing slash, so be sure you include one in the
  74        argument if that is what you want.  If --branches/-b is
  75        specified, the prefix must include a trailing slash.
  76        Setting a prefix is useful if you wish to track multiple
  77        projects that share a common repository.
  78
  79'fetch'::
  80        Fetch unfetched revisions from the Subversion remote we are
  81        tracking.  The name of the [svn-remote "..."] section in the
  82        .git/config file may be specified as an optional command-line
  83        argument.
  84
  85'clone'::
  86        Runs 'init' and 'fetch'.  It will automatically create a
  87        directory based on the basename of the URL passed to it;
  88        or if a second argument is passed; it will create a directory
  89        and work within that.  It accepts all arguments that the
  90        'init' and 'fetch' commands accept; with the exception of
  91        '--fetch-all'.   After a repository is cloned, the 'fetch'
  92        command will be able to update revisions without affecting
  93        the working tree; and the 'rebase' command will be able
  94        to update the working tree with the latest changes.
  95
  96'rebase'::
  97        This fetches revisions from the SVN parent of the current HEAD
  98        and rebases the current (uncommitted to SVN) work against it.
  99
 100This works similarly to 'svn update' or 'git-pull' except that
 101it preserves linear history with 'git-rebase' instead of
 102'git-merge' for ease of dcommiting with git-svn.
 103
 104This accepts all options that 'git-svn fetch' and 'git-rebase'
 105accepts.  However '--fetch-all' only fetches from the current
 106[svn-remote], and not all [svn-remote] definitions.
 107
 108Like 'git-rebase'; this requires that the working tree be clean
 109and have no uncommitted changes.
 110
 111-l;;
 112--local;;
 113        Do not fetch remotely; only run 'git-rebase' against the
 114        last fetched commit from the upstream SVN.
 115
 116'dcommit'::
 117        Commit each diff from a specified head directly to the SVN
 118        repository, and then rebase or reset (depending on whether or
 119        not there is a diff between SVN and head).  This will create
 120        a revision in SVN for each commit in git.
 121        It is recommended that you run git-svn fetch and rebase (not
 122        pull or merge) your commits against the latest changes in the
 123        SVN repository.
 124        An optional command-line argument may be specified as an
 125        alternative to HEAD.
 126        This is advantageous over 'set-tree' (below) because it produces
 127        cleaner, more linear history.
 128+
 129--no-rebase;;
 130        After committing, do not rebase or reset.
 131--
 132
 133'log'::
 134        This should make it easy to look up svn log messages when svn
 135        users refer to -r/--revision numbers.
 136+
 137The following features from `svn log' are supported:
 138+
 139--
 140--revision=<n>[:<n>];;
 141        is supported, non-numeric args are not:
 142        HEAD, NEXT, BASE, PREV, etc ...
 143-v/--verbose;;
 144        it's not completely compatible with the --verbose
 145        output in svn log, but reasonably close.
 146--limit=<n>;;
 147        is NOT the same as --max-count, doesn't count
 148        merged/excluded commits
 149--incremental;;
 150        supported
 151--
 152+
 153New features:
 154+
 155--
 156--show-commit;;
 157        shows the git commit sha1, as well
 158--oneline;;
 159        our version of --pretty=oneline
 160--
 161+
 162NOTE: SVN itself only stores times in UTC and nothing else. The regular svn
 163client converts the UTC time to the local time (or based on the TZ=
 164environment). This command has the same behaviour.
 165+
 166Any other arguments are passed directly to `git log'
 167
 168'blame'::
 169       Show what revision and author last modified each line of a file. The
 170       output of this mode is format-compatible with the output of
 171       `svn blame' by default. Like the SVN blame command,
 172       local uncommitted changes in the working copy are ignored;
 173       the version of the file in the HEAD revision is annotated. Unknown
 174       arguments are passed directly to git-blame.
 175+
 176--git-format;;
 177        Produce output in the same format as `git blame', but with
 178        SVN revision numbers instead of git commit hashes. In this mode,
 179        changes that haven't been committed to SVN (including local
 180        working-copy edits) are shown as revision 0.
 181
 182--
 183'find-rev'::
 184        When given an SVN revision number of the form 'rN', returns the
 185        corresponding git commit hash (this can optionally be followed by a
 186        tree-ish to specify which branch should be searched).  When given a
 187        tree-ish, returns the corresponding SVN revision number.
 188
 189'set-tree'::
 190        You should consider using 'dcommit' instead of this command.
 191        Commit specified commit or tree objects to SVN.  This relies on
 192        your imported fetch data being up-to-date.  This makes
 193        absolutely no attempts to do patching when committing to SVN, it
 194        simply overwrites files with those specified in the tree or
 195        commit.  All merging is assumed to have taken place
 196        independently of git-svn functions.
 197
 198'create-ignore'::
 199        Recursively finds the svn:ignore property on directories and
 200        creates matching .gitignore files. The resulting files are staged to
 201        be committed, but are not committed. Use -r/--revision to refer to a
 202        specfic revision.
 203
 204'show-ignore'::
 205        Recursively finds and lists the svn:ignore property on
 206        directories.  The output is suitable for appending to
 207        the $GIT_DIR/info/exclude file.
 208
 209'commit-diff'::
 210        Commits the diff of two tree-ish arguments from the
 211        command-line.  This command is intended for interoperability with
 212        git-svnimport and does not rely on being inside an git-svn
 213        init-ed repository.  This command takes three arguments, (a) the
 214        original tree to diff against, (b) the new tree result, (c) the
 215        URL of the target Subversion repository.  The final argument
 216        (URL) may be omitted if you are working from a git-svn-aware
 217        repository (that has been init-ed with git-svn).
 218        The -r<revision> option is required for this.
 219
 220'info'::
 221        Shows information about a file or directory similar to what
 222        `svn info' provides.  Does not currently support a -r/--revision
 223        argument.  Use the --url option to output only the value of the
 224        'URL:' field.
 225
 226'proplist'::
 227        Lists the properties stored in the Subversion repository about a
 228        given file or directory.  Use -r/--revision to refer to a specific
 229        Subversion revision.
 230
 231'propget'::
 232        Gets the Subversion property given as the first argument, for a
 233        file.  A specific revision can be specified with -r/--revision.
 234
 235'show-externals'::
 236        Shows the Subversion externals.  Use -r/--revision to specify a
 237        specific revision.
 238
 239--
 240
 241OPTIONS
 242-------
 243--
 244
 245--shared[={false|true|umask|group|all|world|everybody}]::
 246--template=<template_directory>::
 247        Only used with the 'init' command.
 248        These are passed directly to linkgit:git-init[1].
 249
 250-r <ARG>::
 251--revision <ARG>::
 252
 253Used with the 'fetch' command.
 254
 255This allows revision ranges for partial/cauterized history
 256to be supported.  $NUMBER, $NUMBER1:$NUMBER2 (numeric ranges),
 257$NUMBER:HEAD, and BASE:$NUMBER are all supported.
 258
 259This can allow you to make partial mirrors when running fetch;
 260but is generally not recommended because history will be skipped
 261and lost.
 262
 263-::
 264--stdin::
 265
 266Only used with the 'set-tree' command.
 267
 268Read a list of commits from stdin and commit them in reverse
 269order.  Only the leading sha1 is read from each line, so
 270git-rev-list --pretty=oneline output can be used.
 271
 272--rmdir::
 273
 274Only used with the 'dcommit', 'set-tree' and 'commit-diff' commands.
 275
 276Remove directories from the SVN tree if there are no files left
 277behind.  SVN can version empty directories, and they are not
 278removed by default if there are no files left in them.  git
 279cannot version empty directories.  Enabling this flag will make
 280the commit to SVN act like git.
 281
 282config key: svn.rmdir
 283
 284-e::
 285--edit::
 286
 287Only used with the 'dcommit', 'set-tree' and 'commit-diff' commands.
 288
 289Edit the commit message before committing to SVN.  This is off by
 290default for objects that are commits, and forced on when committing
 291tree objects.
 292
 293config key: svn.edit
 294
 295-l<num>::
 296--find-copies-harder::
 297
 298Only used with the 'dcommit', 'set-tree' and 'commit-diff' commands.
 299
 300They are both passed directly to git-diff-tree see
 301linkgit:git-diff-tree[1] for more information.
 302
 303[verse]
 304config key: svn.l
 305config key: svn.findcopiesharder
 306
 307-A<filename>::
 308--authors-file=<filename>::
 309
 310Syntax is compatible with the files used by git-svnimport and
 311git-cvsimport:
 312
 313------------------------------------------------------------------------
 314        loginname = Joe User <user@example.com>
 315------------------------------------------------------------------------
 316
 317If this option is specified and git-svn encounters an SVN
 318committer name that does not exist in the authors-file, git-svn
 319will abort operation. The user will then have to add the
 320appropriate entry.  Re-running the previous git-svn command
 321after the authors-file is modified should continue operation.
 322
 323config key: svn.authorsfile
 324
 325-q::
 326--quiet::
 327        Make git-svn less verbose.
 328
 329--repack[=<n>]::
 330--repack-flags=<flags>::
 331
 332These should help keep disk usage sane for large fetches
 333with many revisions.
 334
 335--repack takes an optional argument for the number of revisions
 336to fetch before repacking.  This defaults to repacking every
 3371000 commits fetched if no argument is specified.
 338
 339--repack-flags are passed directly to linkgit:git-repack[1].
 340
 341[verse]
 342config key: svn.repack
 343config key: svn.repackflags
 344
 345-m::
 346--merge::
 347-s<strategy>::
 348--strategy=<strategy>::
 349
 350These are only used with the 'dcommit' and 'rebase' commands.
 351
 352Passed directly to git-rebase when using 'dcommit' if a
 353'git-reset' cannot be used (see dcommit).
 354
 355-n::
 356--dry-run::
 357
 358This is only used with the 'dcommit' command.
 359
 360Print out the series of git arguments that would show
 361which diffs would be committed to SVN.
 362
 363--
 364
 365ADVANCED OPTIONS
 366----------------
 367--
 368
 369-i<GIT_SVN_ID>::
 370--id <GIT_SVN_ID>::
 371
 372This sets GIT_SVN_ID (instead of using the environment).  This
 373allows the user to override the default refname to fetch from
 374when tracking a single URL.  The 'log' and 'dcommit' commands
 375no longer require this switch as an argument.
 376
 377-R<remote name>::
 378--svn-remote <remote name>::
 379        Specify the [svn-remote "<remote name>"] section to use,
 380        this allows SVN multiple repositories to be tracked.
 381        Default: "svn"
 382
 383--follow-parent::
 384        This is especially helpful when we're tracking a directory
 385        that has been moved around within the repository, or if we
 386        started tracking a branch and never tracked the trunk it was
 387        descended from. This feature is enabled by default, use
 388        --no-follow-parent to disable it.
 389
 390config key: svn.followparent
 391
 392--
 393CONFIG FILE-ONLY OPTIONS
 394------------------------
 395--
 396
 397svn.noMetadata::
 398svn-remote.<name>.noMetadata::
 399
 400This gets rid of the git-svn-id: lines at the end of every commit.
 401
 402If you lose your .git/svn/git-svn/.rev_db file, git-svn will not
 403be able to rebuild it and you won't be able to fetch again,
 404either.  This is fine for one-shot imports.
 405
 406The 'git-svn log' command will not work on repositories using
 407this, either.  Using this conflicts with the 'useSvmProps'
 408option for (hopefully) obvious reasons.
 409
 410svn.useSvmProps::
 411svn-remote.<name>.useSvmProps::
 412
 413This allows git-svn to re-map repository URLs and UUIDs from
 414mirrors created using SVN::Mirror (or svk) for metadata.
 415
 416If an SVN revision has a property, "svm:headrev", it is likely
 417that the revision was created by SVN::Mirror (also used by SVK).
 418The property contains a repository UUID and a revision.  We want
 419to make it look like we are mirroring the original URL, so
 420introduce a helper function that returns the original identity
 421URL and UUID, and use it when generating metadata in commit
 422messages.
 423
 424svn.useSvnsyncProps::
 425svn-remote.<name>.useSvnsyncprops::
 426        Similar to the useSvmProps option; this is for users
 427        of the svnsync(1) command distributed with SVN 1.4.x and
 428        later.
 429
 430svn-remote.<name>.rewriteRoot::
 431        This allows users to create repositories from alternate
 432        URLs.  For example, an administrator could run git-svn on the
 433        server locally (accessing via file://) but wish to distribute
 434        the repository with a public http:// or svn:// URL in the
 435        metadata so users of it will see the public URL.
 436
 437Since the noMetadata, rewriteRoot, useSvnsyncProps and useSvmProps
 438options all affect the metadata generated and used by git-svn; they
 439*must* be set in the configuration file before any history is imported
 440and these settings should never be changed once they are set.
 441
 442Additionally, only one of these four options can be used per-svn-remote
 443section because they affect the 'git-svn-id:' metadata line.
 444
 445--
 446
 447BASIC EXAMPLES
 448--------------
 449
 450Tracking and contributing to the trunk of a Subversion-managed project:
 451
 452------------------------------------------------------------------------
 453# Clone a repo (like git clone):
 454        git-svn clone http://svn.foo.org/project/trunk
 455# Enter the newly cloned directory:
 456        cd trunk
 457# You should be on master branch, double-check with git-branch
 458        git branch
 459# Do some work and commit locally to git:
 460        git commit ...
 461# Something is committed to SVN, rebase your local changes against the
 462# latest changes in SVN:
 463        git-svn rebase
 464# Now commit your changes (that were committed previously using git) to SVN,
 465# as well as automatically updating your working HEAD:
 466        git-svn dcommit
 467# Append svn:ignore settings to the default git exclude file:
 468        git-svn show-ignore >> .git/info/exclude
 469------------------------------------------------------------------------
 470
 471Tracking and contributing to an entire Subversion-managed project
 472(complete with a trunk, tags and branches):
 473
 474------------------------------------------------------------------------
 475# Clone a repo (like git clone):
 476        git-svn clone http://svn.foo.org/project -T trunk -b branches -t tags
 477# View all branches and tags you have cloned:
 478        git branch -r
 479# Reset your master to trunk (or any other branch, replacing 'trunk'
 480# with the appropriate name):
 481        git reset --hard remotes/trunk
 482# You may only dcommit to one branch/tag/trunk at a time.  The usage
 483# of dcommit/rebase/show-ignore should be the same as above.
 484------------------------------------------------------------------------
 485
 486The initial 'git-svn clone' can be quite time-consuming
 487(especially for large Subversion repositories). If multiple
 488people (or one person with multiple machines) want to use
 489git-svn to interact with the same Subversion repository, you can
 490do the initial 'git-svn clone' to a repository on a server and
 491have each person clone that repository with 'git clone':
 492
 493------------------------------------------------------------------------
 494# Do the initial import on a server
 495        ssh server "cd /pub && git-svn clone http://svn.foo.org/project
 496# Clone locally - make sure the refs/remotes/ space matches the server
 497        mkdir project
 498        cd project
 499        git-init
 500        git remote add origin server:/pub/project
 501        git config --add remote.origin.fetch=+refs/remotes/*:refs/remotes/*
 502        git fetch
 503# Initialize git-svn locally (be sure to use the same URL and -T/-b/-t options as were used on server)
 504        git-svn init http://svn.foo.org/project
 505# Pull the latest changes from Subversion
 506        git-svn rebase
 507------------------------------------------------------------------------
 508
 509REBASE VS. PULL/MERGE
 510---------------------
 511
 512Originally, git-svn recommended that the remotes/git-svn branch be
 513pulled or merged from.  This is because the author favored
 514'git-svn set-tree B' to commit a single head rather than the
 515'git-svn set-tree A..B' notation to commit multiple commits.
 516
 517If you use 'git-svn set-tree A..B' to commit several diffs and you do
 518not have the latest remotes/git-svn merged into my-branch, you should
 519use 'git-svn rebase' to update your work branch instead of 'git pull' or
 520'git merge'.  'pull/merge' can cause non-linear history to be flattened
 521when committing into SVN, which can lead to merge commits reversing
 522previous commits in SVN.
 523
 524DESIGN PHILOSOPHY
 525-----------------
 526Merge tracking in Subversion is lacking and doing branched development
 527with Subversion can be cumbersome as a result.  While git-svn can track
 528copy history (including branches and tags) for repositories adopting a
 529standard layout, it cannot yet represent merge history that happened
 530inside git back upstream to SVN users.  Therefore it is advised that
 531users keep history as linear as possible inside git to ease
 532compatibility with SVN (see the CAVEATS section below).
 533
 534CAVEATS
 535-------
 536
 537For the sake of simplicity and interoperating with a less-capable system
 538(SVN), it is recommended that all git-svn users clone, fetch and dcommit
 539directly from the SVN server, and avoid all git-clone/pull/merge/push
 540operations between git repositories and branches.  The recommended
 541method of exchanging code between git branches and users is
 542git-format-patch and git-am, or just dcommiting to the SVN repository.
 543
 544Running 'git-merge' or 'git-pull' is NOT recommended on a branch you
 545plan to dcommit from.  Subversion does not represent merges in any
 546reasonable or useful fashion; so users using Subversion cannot see any
 547merges you've made.  Furthermore, if you merge or pull from a git branch
 548that is a mirror of an SVN branch, dcommit may commit to the wrong
 549branch.
 550
 551'git-clone' does not clone branches under the refs/remotes/ hierarchy or
 552any git-svn metadata, or config.  So repositories created and managed with
 553using git-svn should use rsync(1) for cloning, if cloning is to be done
 554at all.
 555
 556Since 'dcommit' uses rebase internally, any git branches you git-push to
 557before dcommit on will require forcing an overwrite of the existing ref
 558on the remote repository.  This is generally considered bad practice,
 559see the git-push(1) documentation for details.
 560
 561Do not use the --amend option of git-commit(1) on a change you've
 562already dcommitted.  It is considered bad practice to --amend commits
 563you've already pushed to a remote repository for other users, and
 564dcommit with SVN is analogous to that.
 565
 566BUGS
 567----
 568
 569We ignore all SVN properties except svn:executable.  Any unhandled
 570properties are logged to $GIT_DIR/svn/<refname>/unhandled.log
 571
 572Renamed and copied directories are not detected by git and hence not
 573tracked when committing to SVN.  I do not plan on adding support for
 574this as it's quite difficult and time-consuming to get working for all
 575the possible corner cases (git doesn't do it, either).  Committing
 576renamed and copied files are fully supported if they're similar enough
 577for git to detect them.
 578
 579CONFIGURATION
 580-------------
 581
 582git-svn stores [svn-remote] configuration information in the
 583repository .git/config file.  It is similar the core git
 584[remote] sections except 'fetch' keys do not accept glob
 585arguments; but they are instead handled by the 'branches'
 586and 'tags' keys.  Since some SVN repositories are oddly
 587configured with multiple projects glob expansions such those
 588listed below are allowed:
 589
 590------------------------------------------------------------------------
 591[svn-remote "project-a"]
 592        url = http://server.org/svn
 593        branches = branches/*/project-a:refs/remotes/project-a/branches/*
 594        tags = tags/*/project-a:refs/remotes/project-a/tags/*
 595        trunk = trunk/project-a:refs/remotes/project-a/trunk
 596------------------------------------------------------------------------
 597
 598Keep in mind that the '*' (asterisk) wildcard of the local ref
 599(right of the ':') *must* be the farthest right path component;
 600however the remote wildcard may be anywhere as long as it's own
 601independent path component (surrounded by '/' or EOL).   This
 602type of configuration is not automatically created by 'init' and
 603should be manually entered with a text-editor or using
 604linkgit:git-config[1]
 605
 606SEE ALSO
 607--------
 608linkgit:git-rebase[1]
 609
 610Author
 611------
 612Written by Eric Wong <normalperson@yhbt.net>.
 613
 614Documentation
 615-------------
 616Written by Eric Wong <normalperson@yhbt.net>.