git-svn(1) ========== NAME ---- git-svn - bidirectional operation between a single Subversion branch and git SYNOPSIS -------- 'git-svn' [options] [arguments] DESCRIPTION ----------- git-svn is a simple conduit for changesets between a single Subversion branch and git. git-svn is not to be confused with git-svnimport. The were designed with very different goals in mind. git-svn is designed for an individual developer who wants a bidirectional flow of changesets between a single branch in Subversion and an arbitrary number of branches in git. git-svnimport is designed for read-only operation on repositories that match a particular layout (albeit the recommended one by SVN developers). For importing svn, git-svnimport is potentially more powerful when operating on repositories organized under the recommended trunk/branch/tags structure, and should be faster, too. git-svn completely ignores the very limited view of branching that Subversion has. This allows git-svn to be much easier to use, especially on repositories that are not organized in a manner that git-svnimport is designed for. COMMANDS -------- init:: Creates an empty git repository with additional metadata directories for git-svn. The SVN_URL must be specified at this point. fetch:: Fetch unfetched revisions from the SVN_URL we are tracking. refs/heads/remotes/git-svn will be updated to the latest revision. Note: You should never attempt to modify the remotes/git-svn branch outside of git-svn. Instead, create a branch from remotes/git-svn and work on that branch. Use the 'commit' command (see below) to write git commits back to remotes/git-svn. commit:: Commit specified commit or tree objects to SVN. This relies on your imported fetch data being up-to-date. This makes absolutely no attempts to do patching when committing to SVN, it simply overwrites files with those specified in the tree or commit. All merging is assumed to have taken place independently of git-svn functions. rebuild:: Not a part of daily usage, but this is a useful command if you've just cloned a repository (using git-clone) that was tracked with git-svn. Unfortunately, git-clone does not clone git-svn metadata and the svn working tree that git-svn uses for its operations. This rebuilds the metadata so git-svn can resume fetch operations. SVN_URL may be optionally specified if the directory/repository you're tracking has moved or changed protocols. show-ignore:: Recursively finds and lists the svn:ignore property on directories. The output is suitable for appending to the $GIT_DIR/info/exclude file. OPTIONS ------- -r :: --revision :: Only used with the 'fetch' command. Takes any valid -r svn would accept and passes it directly to svn. -r: ranges and "{" DATE "}" syntax is also supported. This is passed directly to svn, see svn documentation for more details. This can allow you to make partial mirrors when running fetch. -:: --stdin:: Only used with the 'commit' command. Read a list of commits from stdin and commit them in reverse order. Only the leading sha1 is read from each line, so git-rev-list --pretty=oneline output can be used. --rmdir:: Only used with the 'commit' command. Remove directories from the SVN tree if there are no files left behind. SVN can version empty directories, and they are not removed by default if there are no files left in them. git cannot version empty directories. Enabling this flag will make the commit to SVN act like git. -e:: --edit:: Only used with the 'commit' command. Edit the commit message before committing to SVN. This is off by default for objects that are commits, and forced on when committing tree objects. -l:: --find-copies-harder:: Both of these are only used with the 'commit' command. They are both passed directly to git-diff-tree see git-diff-tree(1) for more information. COMPATIBILITY OPTIONS --------------------- --no-ignore-externals:: Only used with the 'fetch' and 'rebuild' command. By default, git-svn passes --ignore-externals to svn to avoid fetching svn:external trees into git. Pass this flag to enable externals tracking directly via git. Versions of svn that do not support --ignore-externals are automatically detected and this flag will be automatically enabled for them. Otherwise, do not enable this flag unless you know what you're doing. --no-stop-on-copy:: Only used with the 'fetch' command. By default, git-svn passes --stop-on-copy to avoid dealing with the copied/renamed branch directory problem entirely. A copied/renamed branch is the result of a being created in the past from a different source. These are problematic to deal with even when working purely with svn if you work inside subdirectories. Do not use this flag unless you know exactly what you're getting yourself into. You have been warned. Examples ~~~~~~~~ Tracking and contributing to an Subversion managed-project: # Initialize a tree (like git init-db):: git-svn init http://svn.foo.org/project/trunk # Fetch remote revisions:: git-svn fetch # Create your own branch to hack on:: git checkout -b my-branch remotes/git-svn # Commit only the git commits you want to SVN:: git-svn commit [ ...] # Commit all the git commits from my-branch that don't exist in SVN:: git-svn commit remotes/git-svn..my-branch # Something is committed to SVN, pull the latest into your branch:: git-svn fetch && git pull . remotes/git-svn # Append svn:ignore settings to the default git exclude file: git-svn show-ignore >> .git/info/exclude DESIGN PHILOSOPHY ----------------- Merge tracking in Subversion is lacking and doing branched development with Subversion is cumbersome as a result. git-svn completely forgoes any automated merge/branch tracking on the Subversion side and leaves it entirely up to the user on the git side. It's simply not worth it to do a useful translation when the the original signal is weak. TRACKING MULTIPLE REPOSITORIES OR BRANCHES ------------------------------------------ This is for advanced users, most users should ignore this section. Because git-svn does not care about relationships between different branches or directories in a Subversion repository, git-svn has a simple hack to allow it to track an arbitrary number of related _or_ unrelated SVN repositories via one git repository. Simply set the GIT_SVN_ID environment variable to a name other other than "git-svn" (the default) and git-svn will ignore the contents of the $GIT_DIR/git-svn directory and instead do all of its work in $GIT_DIR/$GIT_SVN_ID for that invocation. The interface branch will be remotes/$GIT_SVN_ID, instead of remotes/git-svn. Any remotes/$GIT_SVN_ID branch should never be modified by the user outside of git-svn commands. ADDITIONAL FETCH ARGUMENTS -------------------------- This is for advanced users, most users should ignore this section. Unfetched SVN revisions may be imported as children of existing commits by specifying additional arguments to 'fetch'. Additional parents may optionally be specified in the form of sha1 hex sums at the command-line. Unfetched SVN revisions may also be tied to particular git commits with the following syntax: svn_revision_number=git_commit_sha1 This allows you to tie unfetched SVN revision 375 to your current HEAD:: git-svn fetch 375=$(git-rev-parse HEAD) BUGS ---- If somebody commits a conflicting changeset to SVN at a bad moment (right before you commit) causing a conflict and your commit to fail, your svn working tree ($GIT_DIR/git-svn/tree) may be dirtied. The easiest thing to do is probably just to rm -rf $GIT_DIR/git-svn/tree and run 'rebuild'. We ignore all SVN properties except svn:executable. Too difficult to map them since we rely heavily on git write-tree being _exactly_ the same on both the SVN and git working trees and I prefer not to clutter working trees with metadata files. svn:keywords can't be ignored in Subversion (at least I don't know of a way to ignore them). Renamed and copied directories are not detected by git and hence not tracked when committing to SVN. I do not plan on adding support for this as it's quite difficult and time-consuming to get working for all the possible corner cases (git doesn't do it, either). Renamed and copied files are fully supported if they're similar enough for git to detect them. Author ------ Written by Eric Wong . Documentation ------------- Written by Eric Wong .