git-cvsimport(1) ================ NAME ---- git-cvsimport - Salvage your data out of another SCM people love to hate SYNOPSIS -------- [verse] 'git cvsimport' [-o ] [-h] [-v] [-d ] [-A ] [-p ] [-P ] [-C ] [-z ] [-i] [-k] [-u] [-s ] [-a] [-m] [-M ] [-S ] [-L ] [-r ] [-R] [] DESCRIPTION ----------- Imports a CVS repository into Git. It will either create a new repository, or incrementally import into an existing one. Splitting the CVS log into patch sets is done by 'cvsps'. At least version 2.1 is required. *WARNING:* for certain situations the import leads to incorrect results. Please see the section <> for further reference. You should *never* do any work of your own on the branches that are created by 'git cvsimport'. By default initial import will create and populate a "master" branch from the CVS repository's main branch which you're free to work with; after that, you need to 'git merge' incremental imports, or any CVS branches, yourself. It is advisable to specify a named remote via -r to separate and protect the incoming branches. If you intend to set up a shared public repository that all developers can read/write, or if you want to use linkgit:git-cvsserver[1], then you probably want to make a bare clone of the imported repository, and use the clone as the shared repository. See linkgit:gitcvs-migration[7]. OPTIONS ------- -v:: Verbosity: let 'cvsimport' report what it is doing. -d :: The root of the CVS archive. May be local (a simple path) or remote; currently, only the :local:, :ext: and :pserver: access methods are supported. If not given, 'git cvsimport' will try to read it from `CVS/Root`. If no such file exists, it checks for the `CVSROOT` environment variable. :: The CVS module you want to import. Relative to . If not given, 'git cvsimport' tries to read it from `CVS/Repository`. -C :: The Git repository to import to. If the directory doesn't exist, it will be created. Default is the current directory. -r :: The Git remote to import this CVS repository into. Moves all CVS branches into remotes// akin to the way 'git clone' uses 'origin' by default. -o :: When no remote is specified (via -r) the 'HEAD' branch from CVS is imported to the 'origin' branch within the Git repository, as 'HEAD' already has a special meaning for Git. When a remote is specified the 'HEAD' branch is named remotes//master mirroring 'git clone' behaviour. Use this option if you want to import into a different branch. + Use '-o master' for continuing an import that was initially done by the old cvs2git tool. -i:: Import-only: don't perform a checkout after importing. This option ensures the working directory and index remain untouched and will not create them if they do not exist. -k:: Kill keywords: will extract files with '-kk' from the CVS archive to avoid noisy changesets. Highly recommended, but off by default to preserve compatibility with early imported trees. -u:: Convert underscores in tag and branch names to dots. -s :: Substitute the character "/" in branch names with -p :: Additional options for cvsps. The options '-u' and '-A' are implicit and should not be used here. + If you need to pass multiple options, separate them with a comma. -z :: Pass the timestamp fuzz factor to cvsps, in seconds. If unset, cvsps defaults to 300s. -P :: Instead of calling cvsps, read the provided cvsps output file. Useful for debugging or when cvsps is being handled outside cvsimport. -m:: Attempt to detect merges based on the commit message. This option will enable default regexes that try to capture the source branch name from the commit message. -M :: Attempt to detect merges based on the commit message with a custom regex. It can be used with '-m' to enable the default regexes as well. You must escape forward slashes. + The regex must capture the source branch name in $1. + This option can be used several times to provide several detection regexes. -S :: Skip paths matching the regex. -a:: Import all commits, including recent ones. cvsimport by default skips commits that have a timestamp less than 10 minutes ago. -L :: Limit the number of commits imported. Workaround for cases where cvsimport leaks memory. -A :: CVS by default uses the Unix username when writing its commit logs. Using this option and an author-conv-file maps the name recorded in CVS to author name, e-mail and optional timezone: + --------- exon=Andreas Ericsson spawn=Simon Pawn America/Chicago --------- + 'git cvsimport' will make it appear as those authors had their GIT_AUTHOR_NAME and GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL set properly all along. If a timezone is specified, GIT_AUTHOR_DATE will have the corresponding offset applied. + For convenience, this data is saved to `$GIT_DIR/cvs-authors` each time the '-A' option is provided and read from that same file each time 'git cvsimport' is run. + It is not recommended to use this feature if you intend to export changes back to CVS again later with 'git cvsexportcommit'. -R:: Generate a `$GIT_DIR/cvs-revisions` file containing a mapping from CVS revision numbers to newly-created Git commit IDs. The generated file will contain one line for each (filename, revision) pair imported; each line will look like + --------- src/widget.c 1.1 1d862f173cdc7325b6fa6d2ae1cfd61fd1b512b7 --------- + The revision data is appended to the file if it already exists, for use when doing incremental imports. + This option may be useful if you have CVS revision numbers stored in commit messages, bug-tracking systems, email archives, and the like. -h:: Print a short usage message and exit. OUTPUT ------ If '-v' is specified, the script reports what it is doing. Otherwise, success is indicated the Unix way, i.e. by simply exiting with a zero exit status. [[issues]] ISSUES ------ Problems related to timestamps: * If timestamps of commits in the CVS repository are not stable enough to be used for ordering commits changes may show up in the wrong order. * If any files were ever "cvs import"ed more than once (e.g., import of more than one vendor release) the HEAD contains the wrong content. * If the timestamp order of different files cross the revision order within the commit matching time window the order of commits may be wrong. Problems related to branches: * Branches on which no commits have been made are not imported. * All files from the branching point are added to a branch even if never added in CVS. * This applies to files added to the source branch *after* a daughter branch was created: if previously no commit was made on the daughter branch they will erroneously be added to the daughter branch in git. Problems related to tags: * Multiple tags on the same revision are not imported. If you suspect that any of these issues may apply to the repository you want to imort, consider using cvs2git: * cvs2git (part of cvs2svn), `http://subversion.apache.org/` GIT --- Part of the linkgit:git[1] suite