Documentation / git-svn.txton commit git-format-patch: add a new format.cc configuration variable (fe8928e)
   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. This is
 170       identical to `git blame', but SVN revision numbers are shown instead of git
 171       commit hashes.
 172+
 173All arguments are passed directly to `git blame'.
 174
 175--
 176'find-rev'::
 177        When given an SVN revision number of the form 'rN', returns the
 178        corresponding git commit hash (this can optionally be followed by a
 179        tree-ish to specify which branch should be searched).  When given a
 180        tree-ish, returns the corresponding SVN revision number.
 181
 182'set-tree'::
 183        You should consider using 'dcommit' instead of this command.
 184        Commit specified commit or tree objects to SVN.  This relies on
 185        your imported fetch data being up-to-date.  This makes
 186        absolutely no attempts to do patching when committing to SVN, it
 187        simply overwrites files with those specified in the tree or
 188        commit.  All merging is assumed to have taken place
 189        independently of git-svn functions.
 190
 191'show-ignore'::
 192        Recursively finds and lists the svn:ignore property on
 193        directories.  The output is suitable for appending to
 194        the $GIT_DIR/info/exclude file.
 195
 196'commit-diff'::
 197        Commits the diff of two tree-ish arguments from the
 198        command-line.  This command is intended for interoperability with
 199        git-svnimport and does not rely on being inside an git-svn
 200        init-ed repository.  This command takes three arguments, (a) the
 201        original tree to diff against, (b) the new tree result, (c) the
 202        URL of the target Subversion repository.  The final argument
 203        (URL) may be omitted if you are working from a git-svn-aware
 204        repository (that has been init-ed with git-svn).
 205        The -r<revision> option is required for this.
 206
 207'info'::
 208        Shows information about a file or directory similar to what
 209        `svn info' provides.  Does not currently support a -r/--revision
 210        argument.  Use the --url option to output only the value of the
 211        'URL:' field.
 212
 213--
 214
 215OPTIONS
 216-------
 217--
 218
 219--shared[={false|true|umask|group|all|world|everybody}]::
 220--template=<template_directory>::
 221        Only used with the 'init' command.
 222        These are passed directly to linkgit:git-init[1].
 223
 224-r <ARG>::
 225--revision <ARG>::
 226
 227Used with the 'fetch' command.
 228
 229This allows revision ranges for partial/cauterized history
 230to be supported.  $NUMBER, $NUMBER1:$NUMBER2 (numeric ranges),
 231$NUMBER:HEAD, and BASE:$NUMBER are all supported.
 232
 233This can allow you to make partial mirrors when running fetch;
 234but is generally not recommended because history will be skipped
 235and lost.
 236
 237-::
 238--stdin::
 239
 240Only used with the 'set-tree' command.
 241
 242Read a list of commits from stdin and commit them in reverse
 243order.  Only the leading sha1 is read from each line, so
 244git-rev-list --pretty=oneline output can be used.
 245
 246--rmdir::
 247
 248Only used with the 'dcommit', 'set-tree' and 'commit-diff' commands.
 249
 250Remove directories from the SVN tree if there are no files left
 251behind.  SVN can version empty directories, and they are not
 252removed by default if there are no files left in them.  git
 253cannot version empty directories.  Enabling this flag will make
 254the commit to SVN act like git.
 255
 256config key: svn.rmdir
 257
 258-e::
 259--edit::
 260
 261Only used with the 'dcommit', 'set-tree' and 'commit-diff' commands.
 262
 263Edit the commit message before committing to SVN.  This is off by
 264default for objects that are commits, and forced on when committing
 265tree objects.
 266
 267config key: svn.edit
 268
 269-l<num>::
 270--find-copies-harder::
 271
 272Only used with the 'dcommit', 'set-tree' and 'commit-diff' commands.
 273
 274They are both passed directly to git-diff-tree see
 275linkgit:git-diff-tree[1] for more information.
 276
 277[verse]
 278config key: svn.l
 279config key: svn.findcopiesharder
 280
 281-A<filename>::
 282--authors-file=<filename>::
 283
 284Syntax is compatible with the files used by git-svnimport and
 285git-cvsimport:
 286
 287------------------------------------------------------------------------
 288        loginname = Joe User <user@example.com>
 289------------------------------------------------------------------------
 290
 291If this option is specified and git-svn encounters an SVN
 292committer name that does not exist in the authors-file, git-svn
 293will abort operation. The user will then have to add the
 294appropriate entry.  Re-running the previous git-svn command
 295after the authors-file is modified should continue operation.
 296
 297config key: svn.authorsfile
 298
 299-q::
 300--quiet::
 301        Make git-svn less verbose.
 302
 303--repack[=<n>]::
 304--repack-flags=<flags>::
 305
 306These should help keep disk usage sane for large fetches
 307with many revisions.
 308
 309--repack takes an optional argument for the number of revisions
 310to fetch before repacking.  This defaults to repacking every
 3111000 commits fetched if no argument is specified.
 312
 313--repack-flags are passed directly to linkgit:git-repack[1].
 314
 315[verse]
 316config key: svn.repack
 317config key: svn.repackflags
 318
 319-m::
 320--merge::
 321-s<strategy>::
 322--strategy=<strategy>::
 323
 324These are only used with the 'dcommit' and 'rebase' commands.
 325
 326Passed directly to git-rebase when using 'dcommit' if a
 327'git-reset' cannot be used (see dcommit).
 328
 329-n::
 330--dry-run::
 331
 332This is only used with the 'dcommit' command.
 333
 334Print out the series of git arguments that would show
 335which diffs would be committed to SVN.
 336
 337--
 338
 339ADVANCED OPTIONS
 340----------------
 341--
 342
 343-i<GIT_SVN_ID>::
 344--id <GIT_SVN_ID>::
 345
 346This sets GIT_SVN_ID (instead of using the environment).  This
 347allows the user to override the default refname to fetch from
 348when tracking a single URL.  The 'log' and 'dcommit' commands
 349no longer require this switch as an argument.
 350
 351-R<remote name>::
 352--svn-remote <remote name>::
 353        Specify the [svn-remote "<remote name>"] section to use,
 354        this allows SVN multiple repositories to be tracked.
 355        Default: "svn"
 356
 357--follow-parent::
 358        This is especially helpful when we're tracking a directory
 359        that has been moved around within the repository, or if we
 360        started tracking a branch and never tracked the trunk it was
 361        descended from. This feature is enabled by default, use
 362        --no-follow-parent to disable it.
 363
 364config key: svn.followparent
 365
 366--
 367CONFIG FILE-ONLY OPTIONS
 368------------------------
 369--
 370
 371svn.noMetadata::
 372svn-remote.<name>.noMetadata::
 373
 374This gets rid of the git-svn-id: lines at the end of every commit.
 375
 376If you lose your .git/svn/git-svn/.rev_db file, git-svn will not
 377be able to rebuild it and you won't be able to fetch again,
 378either.  This is fine for one-shot imports.
 379
 380The 'git-svn log' command will not work on repositories using
 381this, either.  Using this conflicts with the 'useSvmProps'
 382option for (hopefully) obvious reasons.
 383
 384svn.useSvmProps::
 385svn-remote.<name>.useSvmProps::
 386
 387This allows git-svn to re-map repository URLs and UUIDs from
 388mirrors created using SVN::Mirror (or svk) for metadata.
 389
 390If an SVN revision has a property, "svm:headrev", it is likely
 391that the revision was created by SVN::Mirror (also used by SVK).
 392The property contains a repository UUID and a revision.  We want
 393to make it look like we are mirroring the original URL, so
 394introduce a helper function that returns the original identity
 395URL and UUID, and use it when generating metadata in commit
 396messages.
 397
 398svn.useSvnsyncProps::
 399svn-remote.<name>.useSvnsyncprops::
 400        Similar to the useSvmProps option; this is for users
 401        of the svnsync(1) command distributed with SVN 1.4.x and
 402        later.
 403
 404svn-remote.<name>.rewriteRoot::
 405        This allows users to create repositories from alternate
 406        URLs.  For example, an administrator could run git-svn on the
 407        server locally (accessing via file://) but wish to distribute
 408        the repository with a public http:// or svn:// URL in the
 409        metadata so users of it will see the public URL.
 410
 411Since the noMetadata, rewriteRoot, useSvnsyncProps and useSvmProps
 412options all affect the metadata generated and used by git-svn; they
 413*must* be set in the configuration file before any history is imported
 414and these settings should never be changed once they are set.
 415
 416Additionally, only one of these four options can be used per-svn-remote
 417section because they affect the 'git-svn-id:' metadata line.
 418
 419--
 420
 421BASIC EXAMPLES
 422--------------
 423
 424Tracking and contributing to the trunk of a Subversion-managed project:
 425
 426------------------------------------------------------------------------
 427# Clone a repo (like git clone):
 428        git-svn clone http://svn.foo.org/project/trunk
 429# Enter the newly cloned directory:
 430        cd trunk
 431# You should be on master branch, double-check with git-branch
 432        git branch
 433# Do some work and commit locally to git:
 434        git commit ...
 435# Something is committed to SVN, rebase your local changes against the
 436# latest changes in SVN:
 437        git-svn rebase
 438# Now commit your changes (that were committed previously using git) to SVN,
 439# as well as automatically updating your working HEAD:
 440        git-svn dcommit
 441# Append svn:ignore settings to the default git exclude file:
 442        git-svn show-ignore >> .git/info/exclude
 443------------------------------------------------------------------------
 444
 445Tracking and contributing to an entire Subversion-managed project
 446(complete with a trunk, tags and branches):
 447
 448------------------------------------------------------------------------
 449# Clone a repo (like git clone):
 450        git-svn clone http://svn.foo.org/project -T trunk -b branches -t tags
 451# View all branches and tags you have cloned:
 452        git branch -r
 453# Reset your master to trunk (or any other branch, replacing 'trunk'
 454# with the appropriate name):
 455        git reset --hard remotes/trunk
 456# You may only dcommit to one branch/tag/trunk at a time.  The usage
 457# of dcommit/rebase/show-ignore should be the same as above.
 458------------------------------------------------------------------------
 459
 460The initial 'git-svn clone' can be quite time-consuming
 461(especially for large Subversion repositories). If multiple
 462people (or one person with multiple machines) want to use
 463git-svn to interact with the same Subversion repository, you can
 464do the initial 'git-svn clone' to a repository on a server and
 465have each person clone that repository with 'git clone':
 466
 467------------------------------------------------------------------------
 468# Do the initial import on a server
 469        ssh server "cd /pub && git-svn clone http://svn.foo.org/project
 470# Clone locally - make sure the refs/remotes/ space matches the server
 471        mkdir project
 472        cd project
 473        git-init
 474        git remote add origin server:/pub/project
 475        git config --add remote.origin.fetch=+refs/remotes/*:refs/remotes/*
 476        git fetch
 477# Initialize git-svn locally (be sure to use the same URL and -T/-b/-t options as were used on server)
 478        git-svn init http://svn.foo.org/project
 479# Pull the latest changes from Subversion
 480        git-svn rebase
 481------------------------------------------------------------------------
 482
 483REBASE VS. PULL/MERGE
 484---------------------
 485
 486Originally, git-svn recommended that the remotes/git-svn branch be
 487pulled or merged from.  This is because the author favored
 488'git-svn set-tree B' to commit a single head rather than the
 489'git-svn set-tree A..B' notation to commit multiple commits.
 490
 491If you use 'git-svn set-tree A..B' to commit several diffs and you do
 492not have the latest remotes/git-svn merged into my-branch, you should
 493use 'git-svn rebase' to update your work branch instead of 'git pull' or
 494'git merge'.  'pull/merge' can cause non-linear history to be flattened
 495when committing into SVN, which can lead to merge commits reversing
 496previous commits in SVN.
 497
 498DESIGN PHILOSOPHY
 499-----------------
 500Merge tracking in Subversion is lacking and doing branched development
 501with Subversion can be cumbersome as a result.  While git-svn can track
 502copy history (including branches and tags) for repositories adopting a
 503standard layout, it cannot yet represent merge history that happened
 504inside git back upstream to SVN users.  Therefore it is advised that
 505users keep history as linear as possible inside git to ease
 506compatibility with SVN (see the CAVEATS section below).
 507
 508CAVEATS
 509-------
 510
 511For the sake of simplicity and interoperating with a less-capable system
 512(SVN), it is recommended that all git-svn users clone, fetch and dcommit
 513directly from the SVN server, and avoid all git-clone/pull/merge/push
 514operations between git repositories and branches.  The recommended
 515method of exchanging code between git branches and users is
 516git-format-patch and git-am, or just dcommiting to the SVN repository.
 517
 518Running 'git-merge' or 'git-pull' is NOT recommended on a branch you
 519plan to dcommit from.  Subversion does not represent merges in any
 520reasonable or useful fashion; so users using Subversion cannot see any
 521merges you've made.  Furthermore, if you merge or pull from a git branch
 522that is a mirror of an SVN branch, dcommit may commit to the wrong
 523branch.
 524
 525'git-clone' does not clone branches under the refs/remotes/ hierarchy or
 526any git-svn metadata, or config.  So repositories created and managed with
 527using git-svn should use rsync(1) for cloning, if cloning is to be done
 528at all.
 529
 530Since 'dcommit' uses rebase internally, any git branches you git-push to
 531before dcommit on will require forcing an overwrite of the existing ref
 532on the remote repository.  This is generally considered bad practice,
 533see the git-push(1) documentation for details.
 534
 535Do not use the --amend option of git-commit(1) on a change you've
 536already dcommitted.  It is considered bad practice to --amend commits
 537you've already pushed to a remote repository for other users, and
 538dcommit with SVN is analogous to that.
 539
 540BUGS
 541----
 542
 543We ignore all SVN properties except svn:executable.  Any unhandled
 544properties are logged to $GIT_DIR/svn/<refname>/unhandled.log
 545
 546Renamed and copied directories are not detected by git and hence not
 547tracked when committing to SVN.  I do not plan on adding support for
 548this as it's quite difficult and time-consuming to get working for all
 549the possible corner cases (git doesn't do it, either).  Committing
 550renamed and copied files are fully supported if they're similar enough
 551for git to detect them.
 552
 553CONFIGURATION
 554-------------
 555
 556git-svn stores [svn-remote] configuration information in the
 557repository .git/config file.  It is similar the core git
 558[remote] sections except 'fetch' keys do not accept glob
 559arguments; but they are instead handled by the 'branches'
 560and 'tags' keys.  Since some SVN repositories are oddly
 561configured with multiple projects glob expansions such those
 562listed below are allowed:
 563
 564------------------------------------------------------------------------
 565[svn-remote "project-a"]
 566        url = http://server.org/svn
 567        branches = branches/*/project-a:refs/remotes/project-a/branches/*
 568        tags = tags/*/project-a:refs/remotes/project-a/tags/*
 569        trunk = trunk/project-a:refs/remotes/project-a/trunk
 570------------------------------------------------------------------------
 571
 572Keep in mind that the '*' (asterisk) wildcard of the local ref
 573(right of the ':') *must* be the farthest right path component;
 574however the remote wildcard may be anywhere as long as it's own
 575independent path component (surrounded by '/' or EOL).   This
 576type of configuration is not automatically created by 'init' and
 577should be manually entered with a text-editor or using
 578linkgit:git-config[1]
 579
 580SEE ALSO
 581--------
 582linkgit:git-rebase[1]
 583
 584Author
 585------
 586Written by Eric Wong <normalperson@yhbt.net>.
 587
 588Documentation
 589-------------
 590Written by Eric Wong <normalperson@yhbt.net>.