Documentation / git-svn.txton commit Merge branch 'js/maint-cvsexport' into maint (274d9d3)
   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--
 169'find-rev'::
 170        When given an SVN revision number of the form 'rN', returns the
 171        corresponding git commit hash (this can optionally be followed by a
 172        tree-ish to specify which branch should be searched).  When given a
 173        tree-ish, returns the corresponding SVN revision number.
 174
 175'set-tree'::
 176        You should consider using 'dcommit' instead of this command.
 177        Commit specified commit or tree objects to SVN.  This relies on
 178        your imported fetch data being up-to-date.  This makes
 179        absolutely no attempts to do patching when committing to SVN, it
 180        simply overwrites files with those specified in the tree or
 181        commit.  All merging is assumed to have taken place
 182        independently of git-svn functions.
 183
 184'show-ignore'::
 185        Recursively finds and lists the svn:ignore property on
 186        directories.  The output is suitable for appending to
 187        the $GIT_DIR/info/exclude file.
 188
 189'commit-diff'::
 190        Commits the diff of two tree-ish arguments from the
 191        command-line.  This command is intended for interoperability with
 192        git-svnimport and does not rely on being inside an git-svn
 193        init-ed repository.  This command takes three arguments, (a) the
 194        original tree to diff against, (b) the new tree result, (c) the
 195        URL of the target Subversion repository.  The final argument
 196        (URL) may be omitted if you are working from a git-svn-aware
 197        repository (that has been init-ed with git-svn).
 198        The -r<revision> option is required for this.
 199
 200'info'::
 201        Shows information about a file or directory similar to what
 202        `svn info' provides.  Does not currently support a -r/--revision
 203        argument.  Use the --url option to output only the value of the
 204        'URL:' field.
 205
 206--
 207
 208OPTIONS
 209-------
 210--
 211
 212--shared[={false|true|umask|group|all|world|everybody}]::
 213--template=<template_directory>::
 214        Only used with the 'init' command.
 215        These are passed directly to linkgit:git-init[1].
 216
 217-r <ARG>::
 218--revision <ARG>::
 219
 220Used with the 'fetch' command.
 221
 222This allows revision ranges for partial/cauterized history
 223to be supported.  $NUMBER, $NUMBER1:$NUMBER2 (numeric ranges),
 224$NUMBER:HEAD, and BASE:$NUMBER are all supported.
 225
 226This can allow you to make partial mirrors when running fetch;
 227but is generally not recommended because history will be skipped
 228and lost.
 229
 230-::
 231--stdin::
 232
 233Only used with the 'set-tree' command.
 234
 235Read a list of commits from stdin and commit them in reverse
 236order.  Only the leading sha1 is read from each line, so
 237git-rev-list --pretty=oneline output can be used.
 238
 239--rmdir::
 240
 241Only used with the 'dcommit', 'set-tree' and 'commit-diff' commands.
 242
 243Remove directories from the SVN tree if there are no files left
 244behind.  SVN can version empty directories, and they are not
 245removed by default if there are no files left in them.  git
 246cannot version empty directories.  Enabling this flag will make
 247the commit to SVN act like git.
 248
 249config key: svn.rmdir
 250
 251-e::
 252--edit::
 253
 254Only used with the 'dcommit', 'set-tree' and 'commit-diff' commands.
 255
 256Edit the commit message before committing to SVN.  This is off by
 257default for objects that are commits, and forced on when committing
 258tree objects.
 259
 260config key: svn.edit
 261
 262-l<num>::
 263--find-copies-harder::
 264
 265Only used with the 'dcommit', 'set-tree' and 'commit-diff' commands.
 266
 267They are both passed directly to git-diff-tree see
 268linkgit:git-diff-tree[1] for more information.
 269
 270[verse]
 271config key: svn.l
 272config key: svn.findcopiesharder
 273
 274-A<filename>::
 275--authors-file=<filename>::
 276
 277Syntax is compatible with the files used by git-svnimport and
 278git-cvsimport:
 279
 280------------------------------------------------------------------------
 281        loginname = Joe User <user@example.com>
 282------------------------------------------------------------------------
 283
 284If this option is specified and git-svn encounters an SVN
 285committer name that does not exist in the authors-file, git-svn
 286will abort operation. The user will then have to add the
 287appropriate entry.  Re-running the previous git-svn command
 288after the authors-file is modified should continue operation.
 289
 290config key: svn.authorsfile
 291
 292-q::
 293--quiet::
 294        Make git-svn less verbose.
 295
 296--repack[=<n>]::
 297--repack-flags=<flags>::
 298
 299These should help keep disk usage sane for large fetches
 300with many revisions.
 301
 302--repack takes an optional argument for the number of revisions
 303to fetch before repacking.  This defaults to repacking every
 3041000 commits fetched if no argument is specified.
 305
 306--repack-flags are passed directly to linkgit:git-repack[1].
 307
 308[verse]
 309config key: svn.repack
 310config key: svn.repackflags
 311
 312-m::
 313--merge::
 314-s<strategy>::
 315--strategy=<strategy>::
 316
 317These are only used with the 'dcommit' and 'rebase' commands.
 318
 319Passed directly to git-rebase when using 'dcommit' if a
 320'git-reset' cannot be used (see dcommit).
 321
 322-n::
 323--dry-run::
 324
 325This is only used with the 'dcommit' command.
 326
 327Print out the series of git arguments that would show
 328which diffs would be committed to SVN.
 329
 330--
 331
 332ADVANCED OPTIONS
 333----------------
 334--
 335
 336-i<GIT_SVN_ID>::
 337--id <GIT_SVN_ID>::
 338
 339This sets GIT_SVN_ID (instead of using the environment).  This
 340allows the user to override the default refname to fetch from
 341when tracking a single URL.  The 'log' and 'dcommit' commands
 342no longer require this switch as an argument.
 343
 344-R<remote name>::
 345--svn-remote <remote name>::
 346        Specify the [svn-remote "<remote name>"] section to use,
 347        this allows SVN multiple repositories to be tracked.
 348        Default: "svn"
 349
 350--follow-parent::
 351        This is especially helpful when we're tracking a directory
 352        that has been moved around within the repository, or if we
 353        started tracking a branch and never tracked the trunk it was
 354        descended from. This feature is enabled by default, use
 355        --no-follow-parent to disable it.
 356
 357config key: svn.followparent
 358
 359--
 360CONFIG FILE-ONLY OPTIONS
 361------------------------
 362--
 363
 364svn.noMetadata::
 365svn-remote.<name>.noMetadata::
 366
 367This gets rid of the git-svn-id: lines at the end of every commit.
 368
 369If you lose your .git/svn/git-svn/.rev_db file, git-svn will not
 370be able to rebuild it and you won't be able to fetch again,
 371either.  This is fine for one-shot imports.
 372
 373The 'git-svn log' command will not work on repositories using
 374this, either.  Using this conflicts with the 'useSvmProps'
 375option for (hopefully) obvious reasons.
 376
 377svn.useSvmProps::
 378svn-remote.<name>.useSvmProps::
 379
 380This allows git-svn to re-map repository URLs and UUIDs from
 381mirrors created using SVN::Mirror (or svk) for metadata.
 382
 383If an SVN revision has a property, "svm:headrev", it is likely
 384that the revision was created by SVN::Mirror (also used by SVK).
 385The property contains a repository UUID and a revision.  We want
 386to make it look like we are mirroring the original URL, so
 387introduce a helper function that returns the original identity
 388URL and UUID, and use it when generating metadata in commit
 389messages.
 390
 391svn.useSvnsyncProps::
 392svn-remote.<name>.useSvnsyncprops::
 393        Similar to the useSvmProps option; this is for users
 394        of the svnsync(1) command distributed with SVN 1.4.x and
 395        later.
 396
 397svn-remote.<name>.rewriteRoot::
 398        This allows users to create repositories from alternate
 399        URLs.  For example, an administrator could run git-svn on the
 400        server locally (accessing via file://) but wish to distribute
 401        the repository with a public http:// or svn:// URL in the
 402        metadata so users of it will see the public URL.
 403
 404Since the noMetadata, rewriteRoot, useSvnsyncProps and useSvmProps
 405options all affect the metadata generated and used by git-svn; they
 406*must* be set in the configuration file before any history is imported
 407and these settings should never be changed once they are set.
 408
 409Additionally, only one of these four options can be used per-svn-remote
 410section because they affect the 'git-svn-id:' metadata line.
 411
 412--
 413
 414BASIC EXAMPLES
 415--------------
 416
 417Tracking and contributing to the trunk of a Subversion-managed project:
 418
 419------------------------------------------------------------------------
 420# Clone a repo (like git clone):
 421        git-svn clone http://svn.foo.org/project/trunk
 422# Enter the newly cloned directory:
 423        cd trunk
 424# You should be on master branch, double-check with git-branch
 425        git branch
 426# Do some work and commit locally to git:
 427        git commit ...
 428# Something is committed to SVN, rebase your local changes against the
 429# latest changes in SVN:
 430        git-svn rebase
 431# Now commit your changes (that were committed previously using git) to SVN,
 432# as well as automatically updating your working HEAD:
 433        git-svn dcommit
 434# Append svn:ignore settings to the default git exclude file:
 435        git-svn show-ignore >> .git/info/exclude
 436------------------------------------------------------------------------
 437
 438Tracking and contributing to an entire Subversion-managed project
 439(complete with a trunk, tags and branches):
 440
 441------------------------------------------------------------------------
 442# Clone a repo (like git clone):
 443        git-svn clone http://svn.foo.org/project -T trunk -b branches -t tags
 444# View all branches and tags you have cloned:
 445        git branch -r
 446# Reset your master to trunk (or any other branch, replacing 'trunk'
 447# with the appropriate name):
 448        git reset --hard remotes/trunk
 449# You may only dcommit to one branch/tag/trunk at a time.  The usage
 450# of dcommit/rebase/show-ignore should be the same as above.
 451------------------------------------------------------------------------
 452
 453The initial 'git-svn clone' can be quite time-consuming
 454(especially for large Subversion repositories). If multiple
 455people (or one person with multiple machines) want to use
 456git-svn to interact with the same Subversion repository, you can
 457do the initial 'git-svn clone' to a repository on a server and
 458have each person clone that repository with 'git clone':
 459
 460------------------------------------------------------------------------
 461# Do the initial import on a server
 462        ssh server "cd /pub && git-svn clone http://svn.foo.org/project
 463# Clone locally - make sure the refs/remotes/ space matches the server
 464        mkdir project
 465        cd project
 466        git-init
 467        git remote add origin server:/pub/project
 468        git config --add remote.origin.fetch=+refs/remotes/*:refs/remotes/*
 469        git fetch
 470# Initialize git-svn locally (be sure to use the same URL and -T/-b/-t options as were used on server)
 471        git-svn init http://svn.foo.org/project
 472# Pull the latest changes from Subversion
 473        git-svn rebase
 474------------------------------------------------------------------------
 475
 476REBASE VS. PULL/MERGE
 477---------------------
 478
 479Originally, git-svn recommended that the remotes/git-svn branch be
 480pulled or merged from.  This is because the author favored
 481'git-svn set-tree B' to commit a single head rather than the
 482'git-svn set-tree A..B' notation to commit multiple commits.
 483
 484If you use 'git-svn set-tree A..B' to commit several diffs and you do
 485not have the latest remotes/git-svn merged into my-branch, you should
 486use 'git-svn rebase' to update your work branch instead of 'git pull' or
 487'git merge'.  'pull/merge' can cause non-linear history to be flattened
 488when committing into SVN, which can lead to merge commits reversing
 489previous commits in SVN.
 490
 491DESIGN PHILOSOPHY
 492-----------------
 493Merge tracking in Subversion is lacking and doing branched development
 494with Subversion can be cumbersome as a result.  While git-svn can track
 495copy history (including branches and tags) for repositories adopting a
 496standard layout, it cannot yet represent merge history that happened
 497inside git back upstream to SVN users.  Therefore it is advised that
 498users keep history as linear as possible inside git to ease
 499compatibility with SVN (see the CAVEATS section below).
 500
 501CAVEATS
 502-------
 503
 504For the sake of simplicity and interoperating with a less-capable system
 505(SVN), it is recommended that all git-svn users clone, fetch and dcommit
 506directly from the SVN server, and avoid all git-clone/pull/merge/push
 507operations between git repositories and branches.  The recommended
 508method of exchanging code between git branches and users is
 509git-format-patch and git-am, or just dcommiting to the SVN repository.
 510
 511Running 'git-merge' or 'git-pull' is NOT recommended on a branch you
 512plan to dcommit from.  Subversion does not represent merges in any
 513reasonable or useful fashion; so users using Subversion cannot see any
 514merges you've made.  Furthermore, if you merge or pull from a git branch
 515that is a mirror of an SVN branch, dcommit may commit to the wrong
 516branch.
 517
 518'git-clone' does not clone branches under the refs/remotes/ hierarchy or
 519any git-svn metadata, or config.  So repositories created and managed with
 520using git-svn should use rsync(1) for cloning, if cloning is to be done
 521at all.
 522
 523Since 'dcommit' uses rebase internally, any git branches you git-push to
 524before dcommit on will require forcing an overwrite of the existing ref
 525on the remote repository.  This is generally considered bad practice,
 526see the git-push(1) documentation for details.
 527
 528Do not use the --amend option of git-commit(1) on a change you've
 529already dcommitted.  It is considered bad practice to --amend commits
 530you've already pushed to a remote repository for other users, and
 531dcommit with SVN is analogous to that.
 532
 533BUGS
 534----
 535
 536We ignore all SVN properties except svn:executable.  Any unhandled
 537properties are logged to $GIT_DIR/svn/<refname>/unhandled.log
 538
 539Renamed and copied directories are not detected by git and hence not
 540tracked when committing to SVN.  I do not plan on adding support for
 541this as it's quite difficult and time-consuming to get working for all
 542the possible corner cases (git doesn't do it, either).  Committing
 543renamed and copied files are fully supported if they're similar enough
 544for git to detect them.
 545
 546CONFIGURATION
 547-------------
 548
 549git-svn stores [svn-remote] configuration information in the
 550repository .git/config file.  It is similar the core git
 551[remote] sections except 'fetch' keys do not accept glob
 552arguments; but they are instead handled by the 'branches'
 553and 'tags' keys.  Since some SVN repositories are oddly
 554configured with multiple projects glob expansions such those
 555listed below are allowed:
 556
 557------------------------------------------------------------------------
 558[svn-remote "project-a"]
 559        url = http://server.org/svn
 560        branches = branches/*/project-a:refs/remotes/project-a/branches/*
 561        tags = tags/*/project-a:refs/remotes/project-a/tags/*
 562        trunk = trunk/project-a:refs/remotes/project-a/trunk
 563------------------------------------------------------------------------
 564
 565Keep in mind that the '*' (asterisk) wildcard of the local ref
 566(right of the ':') *must* be the farthest right path component;
 567however the remote wildcard may be anywhere as long as it's own
 568independent path component (surrounded by '/' or EOL).   This
 569type of configuration is not automatically created by 'init' and
 570should be manually entered with a text-editor or using
 571linkgit:git-config[1]
 572
 573SEE ALSO
 574--------
 575linkgit:git-rebase[1]
 576
 577Author
 578------
 579Written by Eric Wong <normalperson@yhbt.net>.
 580
 581Documentation
 582-------------
 583Written by Eric Wong <normalperson@yhbt.net>.