One particular suckage of CVS is very hard to work around: CVS is
basically a tool for tracking _file_ history, while git is a tool for
tracking _project_ history. This sometimes causes problems if you are
-used to doign very strange things in CVS, in particular if you're doing
+used to doing very strange things in CVS, in particular if you're doing
things like making branches of just a subset of the project. Git can't
track that, since git never tracks things on the level of an individual
file, only on the whole project level.
working directories _are_ the repositories. However, you can easily
emulate the CVS model by having one special "global repository", which
people can synchronize with. See details later, but in the meantime
-just keep in mind that with git, every checked out working tree will be
-a full revision control of its own.
+just keep in mind that with git, every checked out working tree will
+have a full revision control history of its own.
Importing a CVS archive
any more familiar with it, but make sure it is in your path. After that,
the magic command line is
- git cvsimport <cvsroot> <module>
+ git cvsimport -v -d <cvsroot> -C <destination> <module>
which will do exactly what you'd think it does: it will create a git
-archive of the named CVS module. The new archive will be created in a
-subdirectory named <module>.
+archive of the named CVS module. The new archive will be created in the
+subdirectory named <destination>; it'll be created if it doesn't exist.
+Default is the local directory.
-It can take some time to actually do the conversion for a large archive,
-and the conversion script can be reasonably chatty, but on some not very
-scientific tests it averaged about eight revisions per second, so a
-medium-sized project should not take more than a couple of minutes.
+It can take some time to actually do the conversion for a large archive
+since it involves checking out from CVS every revision of every file,
+and the conversion script is reasonably chatty unless you omit the '-v'
+option, but on some not very scientific tests it averaged about twenty
+revisions per second, so a medium-sized project should not take more
+than a couple of minutes. For larger projects or remote repositories,
+the process may take longer.
+
+After the (initial) import is done, the CVS archive's current head
+revision will be checked out -- thus, you can start adding your own
+changes right away.
+
+The import is incremental, i.e. if you call it again next month it'll
+fetch any CVS updates that have been happening in the meantime. The
+cut-off is date-based, so don't change the branches that were imported
+from CVS.
+
+You can merge those updates (or, in fact, a different CVS branch) into
+your main branch:
+
+ git resolve HEAD origin "merge with current CVS HEAD"
+
+The HEAD revision from CVS is named "origin", not "HEAD", because git
+already uses "HEAD". (If you don't like 'origin', use cvsimport's
+'-o' option to change it.)
Emulating CVS behaviour
-----------------------
-FIXME! Talk about setting up several repositories, and pulling and
-pushing between them. Talk about merging, and branches. Some of this
-needs to be in the tutorial too.
+So, by now you are convinced you absolutely want to work with git, but
+at the same time you absolutely have to have a central repository.
+Step back and think again. Okay, you still need a single central
+repository? There are several ways to go about that:
+
+1. Designate a person responsible to pull all branches. Make the
+repository of this person public, and make every team member
+pull regularly from it.
+
+2. Set up a public repository with read/write access for every team
+member. Use "git pull/push" as you used "cvs update/commit". Be
+sure that your repository is up to date before pushing, just
+like you used to do with "cvs commit"; your push will fail if
+what you are pushing is not up to date.
+3. Make the repository of every team member public. It is the
+responsibility of each single member to pull from every other
+team member.
CVS annotate
interested in. You would see many log messages and patches that
do not have anything to do with the piece of code you are
interested in. As an example, assuming that you have this piece
-code that you are interested in in the HEAD version:
+of code that you are interested in in the HEAD version:
if (frotz) {
nitfol();
called "o-file.c" and then renamed in an earlier commit, or if
the file was created by copying an existing "o-file.c" in an
earlier commit, you will not lose track. If the "if" statement
-did not change across such rename or copy, then the commit that
+did not change across such a rename or copy, then the commit that
does rename or copy would not show in the output, and if the
"if" statement was modified while the file was still called
"o-file.c", it would find the commit that changed the statement