6 git-svn - Bidirectional operation between a single Subversion branch and git
10 'git-svn' <command> [options] [arguments]
14 git-svn is a simple conduit for changesets between Subversion and git.
15 It is not to be confused with linkgit:git-svnimport[1], which is
18 git-svn was originally designed for an individual developer who wants a
19 bidirectional flow of changesets between a single branch in Subversion
20 and an arbitrary number of branches in git. Since its inception,
21 git-svn has gained the ability to track multiple branches in a manner
22 similar to git-svnimport.
24 git-svn is especially useful when it comes to tracking repositories
25 not organized in the way Subversion developers recommend (trunk,
26 branches, tags directories).
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
42 --trunk=<trunk_subdir>;;
44 --tags=<tags_subdir>;;
46 --branches=<branches_subdir>;;
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.
57 Set the 'noMetadata' option in the [svn-remote] config.
59 Set the 'useSvmProps' option in the [svn-remote] config.
61 Set the 'useSvnsyncProps' option in the [svn-remote] config.
62 --rewrite-root=<URL>;;
63 Set the 'rewriteRoot' option in the [svn-remote] config.
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
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.
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
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.
97 This fetches revisions from the SVN parent of the current HEAD
98 and rebases the current (uncommitted to SVN) work against it.
100 This works similarly to 'svn update' or 'git-pull' except that
101 it preserves linear history with 'git-rebase' instead of
102 'git-merge' for ease of dcommiting with git-svn.
104 This accepts all options that 'git-svn fetch' and 'git-rebase'
105 accepts. However '--fetch-all' only fetches from the current
106 [svn-remote], and not all [svn-remote] definitions.
108 Like 'git-rebase'; this requires that the working tree be clean
109 and have no uncommitted changes.
113 Do not fetch remotely; only run 'git-rebase' against the
114 last fetched commit from the upstream SVN.
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
124 An optional command-line argument may be specified as an
126 This is advantageous over 'set-tree' (below) because it produces
127 cleaner, more linear history.
130 After committing, do not rebase or reset.
134 This should make it easy to look up svn log messages when svn
135 users refer to -r/--revision numbers.
137 The following features from `svn log' are supported:
140 --revision=<n>[:<n>];;
141 is supported, non-numeric args are not:
142 HEAD, NEXT, BASE, PREV, etc ...
144 it's not completely compatible with the --verbose
145 output in svn log, but reasonably close.
147 is NOT the same as --max-count, doesn't count
148 merged/excluded commits
157 shows the git commit sha1, as well
159 our version of --pretty=oneline
162 NOTE: SVN itself only stores times in UTC and nothing else. The regular svn
163 client converts the UTC time to the local time (or based on the TZ=
164 environment). This command has the same behaviour.
166 Any other arguments are passed directly to `git log'
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
173 All arguments are passed directly to `git blame'.
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.
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.
193 Recursively finds the svn:ignore property on directories and
194 creates matching .gitignore files. The resulting files are staged to
195 be committed, but are not committed.
198 Recursively finds and lists the svn:ignore property on
199 directories. The output is suitable for appending to
200 the $GIT_DIR/info/exclude file.
203 Commits the diff of two tree-ish arguments from the
204 command-line. This command is intended for interoperability with
205 git-svnimport and does not rely on being inside an git-svn
206 init-ed repository. This command takes three arguments, (a) the
207 original tree to diff against, (b) the new tree result, (c) the
208 URL of the target Subversion repository. The final argument
209 (URL) may be omitted if you are working from a git-svn-aware
210 repository (that has been init-ed with git-svn).
211 The -r<revision> option is required for this.
214 Shows information about a file or directory similar to what
215 `svn info' provides. Does not currently support a -r/--revision
216 argument. Use the --url option to output only the value of the
225 --shared[={false|true|umask|group|all|world|everybody}]::
226 --template=<template_directory>::
227 Only used with the 'init' command.
228 These are passed directly to linkgit:git-init[1].
233 Used with the 'fetch' command.
235 This allows revision ranges for partial/cauterized history
236 to be supported. $NUMBER, $NUMBER1:$NUMBER2 (numeric ranges),
237 $NUMBER:HEAD, and BASE:$NUMBER are all supported.
239 This can allow you to make partial mirrors when running fetch;
240 but is generally not recommended because history will be skipped
246 Only used with the 'set-tree' command.
248 Read a list of commits from stdin and commit them in reverse
249 order. Only the leading sha1 is read from each line, so
250 git-rev-list --pretty=oneline output can be used.
254 Only used with the 'dcommit', 'set-tree' and 'commit-diff' commands.
256 Remove directories from the SVN tree if there are no files left
257 behind. SVN can version empty directories, and they are not
258 removed by default if there are no files left in them. git
259 cannot version empty directories. Enabling this flag will make
260 the commit to SVN act like git.
262 config key: svn.rmdir
267 Only used with the 'dcommit', 'set-tree' and 'commit-diff' commands.
269 Edit the commit message before committing to SVN. This is off by
270 default for objects that are commits, and forced on when committing
276 --find-copies-harder::
278 Only used with the 'dcommit', 'set-tree' and 'commit-diff' commands.
280 They are both passed directly to git-diff-tree see
281 linkgit:git-diff-tree[1] for more information.
285 config key: svn.findcopiesharder
288 --authors-file=<filename>::
290 Syntax is compatible with the files used by git-svnimport and
293 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
294 loginname = Joe User <user@example.com>
295 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
297 If this option is specified and git-svn encounters an SVN
298 committer name that does not exist in the authors-file, git-svn
299 will abort operation. The user will then have to add the
300 appropriate entry. Re-running the previous git-svn command
301 after the authors-file is modified should continue operation.
303 config key: svn.authorsfile
307 Make git-svn less verbose.
310 --repack-flags=<flags>::
312 These should help keep disk usage sane for large fetches
315 --repack takes an optional argument for the number of revisions
316 to fetch before repacking. This defaults to repacking every
317 1000 commits fetched if no argument is specified.
319 --repack-flags are passed directly to linkgit:git-repack[1].
322 config key: svn.repack
323 config key: svn.repackflags
328 --strategy=<strategy>::
330 These are only used with the 'dcommit' and 'rebase' commands.
332 Passed directly to git-rebase when using 'dcommit' if a
333 'git-reset' cannot be used (see dcommit).
338 This is only used with the 'dcommit' command.
340 Print out the series of git arguments that would show
341 which diffs would be committed to SVN.
352 This sets GIT_SVN_ID (instead of using the environment). This
353 allows the user to override the default refname to fetch from
354 when tracking a single URL. The 'log' and 'dcommit' commands
355 no longer require this switch as an argument.
358 --svn-remote <remote name>::
359 Specify the [svn-remote "<remote name>"] section to use,
360 this allows SVN multiple repositories to be tracked.
364 This is especially helpful when we're tracking a directory
365 that has been moved around within the repository, or if we
366 started tracking a branch and never tracked the trunk it was
367 descended from. This feature is enabled by default, use
368 --no-follow-parent to disable it.
370 config key: svn.followparent
373 CONFIG FILE-ONLY OPTIONS
374 ------------------------
378 svn-remote.<name>.noMetadata::
380 This gets rid of the git-svn-id: lines at the end of every commit.
382 If you lose your .git/svn/git-svn/.rev_db file, git-svn will not
383 be able to rebuild it and you won't be able to fetch again,
384 either. This is fine for one-shot imports.
386 The 'git-svn log' command will not work on repositories using
387 this, either. Using this conflicts with the 'useSvmProps'
388 option for (hopefully) obvious reasons.
391 svn-remote.<name>.useSvmProps::
393 This allows git-svn to re-map repository URLs and UUIDs from
394 mirrors created using SVN::Mirror (or svk) for metadata.
396 If an SVN revision has a property, "svm:headrev", it is likely
397 that the revision was created by SVN::Mirror (also used by SVK).
398 The property contains a repository UUID and a revision. We want
399 to make it look like we are mirroring the original URL, so
400 introduce a helper function that returns the original identity
401 URL and UUID, and use it when generating metadata in commit
404 svn.useSvnsyncProps::
405 svn-remote.<name>.useSvnsyncprops::
406 Similar to the useSvmProps option; this is for users
407 of the svnsync(1) command distributed with SVN 1.4.x and
410 svn-remote.<name>.rewriteRoot::
411 This allows users to create repositories from alternate
412 URLs. For example, an administrator could run git-svn on the
413 server locally (accessing via file://) but wish to distribute
414 the repository with a public http:// or svn:// URL in the
415 metadata so users of it will see the public URL.
417 Since the noMetadata, rewriteRoot, useSvnsyncProps and useSvmProps
418 options all affect the metadata generated and used by git-svn; they
419 *must* be set in the configuration file before any history is imported
420 and these settings should never be changed once they are set.
422 Additionally, only one of these four options can be used per-svn-remote
423 section because they affect the 'git-svn-id:' metadata line.
430 Tracking and contributing to the trunk of a Subversion-managed project:
432 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
433 # Clone a repo (like git clone):
434 git-svn clone http://svn.foo.org/project/trunk
435 # Enter the newly cloned directory:
437 # You should be on master branch, double-check with git-branch
439 # Do some work and commit locally to git:
441 # Something is committed to SVN, rebase your local changes against the
442 # latest changes in SVN:
444 # Now commit your changes (that were committed previously using git) to SVN,
445 # as well as automatically updating your working HEAD:
447 # Append svn:ignore settings to the default git exclude file:
448 git-svn show-ignore >> .git/info/exclude
449 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
451 Tracking and contributing to an entire Subversion-managed project
452 (complete with a trunk, tags and branches):
454 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
455 # Clone a repo (like git clone):
456 git-svn clone http://svn.foo.org/project -T trunk -b branches -t tags
457 # View all branches and tags you have cloned:
459 # Reset your master to trunk (or any other branch, replacing 'trunk'
460 # with the appropriate name):
461 git reset --hard remotes/trunk
462 # You may only dcommit to one branch/tag/trunk at a time. The usage
463 # of dcommit/rebase/show-ignore should be the same as above.
464 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
466 The initial 'git-svn clone' can be quite time-consuming
467 (especially for large Subversion repositories). If multiple
468 people (or one person with multiple machines) want to use
469 git-svn to interact with the same Subversion repository, you can
470 do the initial 'git-svn clone' to a repository on a server and
471 have each person clone that repository with 'git clone':
473 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
474 # Do the initial import on a server
475 ssh server "cd /pub && git-svn clone http://svn.foo.org/project
476 # Clone locally - make sure the refs/remotes/ space matches the server
480 git remote add origin server:/pub/project
481 git config --add remote.origin.fetch=+refs/remotes/*:refs/remotes/*
483 # Initialize git-svn locally (be sure to use the same URL and -T/-b/-t options as were used on server)
484 git-svn init http://svn.foo.org/project
485 # Pull the latest changes from Subversion
487 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
489 REBASE VS. PULL/MERGE
490 ---------------------
492 Originally, git-svn recommended that the remotes/git-svn branch be
493 pulled or merged from. This is because the author favored
494 'git-svn set-tree B' to commit a single head rather than the
495 'git-svn set-tree A..B' notation to commit multiple commits.
497 If you use 'git-svn set-tree A..B' to commit several diffs and you do
498 not have the latest remotes/git-svn merged into my-branch, you should
499 use 'git-svn rebase' to update your work branch instead of 'git pull' or
500 'git merge'. 'pull/merge' can cause non-linear history to be flattened
501 when committing into SVN, which can lead to merge commits reversing
502 previous commits in SVN.
506 Merge tracking in Subversion is lacking and doing branched development
507 with Subversion can be cumbersome as a result. While git-svn can track
508 copy history (including branches and tags) for repositories adopting a
509 standard layout, it cannot yet represent merge history that happened
510 inside git back upstream to SVN users. Therefore it is advised that
511 users keep history as linear as possible inside git to ease
512 compatibility with SVN (see the CAVEATS section below).
517 For the sake of simplicity and interoperating with a less-capable system
518 (SVN), it is recommended that all git-svn users clone, fetch and dcommit
519 directly from the SVN server, and avoid all git-clone/pull/merge/push
520 operations between git repositories and branches. The recommended
521 method of exchanging code between git branches and users is
522 git-format-patch and git-am, or just dcommiting to the SVN repository.
524 Running 'git-merge' or 'git-pull' is NOT recommended on a branch you
525 plan to dcommit from. Subversion does not represent merges in any
526 reasonable or useful fashion; so users using Subversion cannot see any
527 merges you've made. Furthermore, if you merge or pull from a git branch
528 that is a mirror of an SVN branch, dcommit may commit to the wrong
531 'git-clone' does not clone branches under the refs/remotes/ hierarchy or
532 any git-svn metadata, or config. So repositories created and managed with
533 using git-svn should use rsync(1) for cloning, if cloning is to be done
536 Since 'dcommit' uses rebase internally, any git branches you git-push to
537 before dcommit on will require forcing an overwrite of the existing ref
538 on the remote repository. This is generally considered bad practice,
539 see the git-push(1) documentation for details.
541 Do not use the --amend option of git-commit(1) on a change you've
542 already dcommitted. It is considered bad practice to --amend commits
543 you've already pushed to a remote repository for other users, and
544 dcommit with SVN is analogous to that.
549 We ignore all SVN properties except svn:executable. Any unhandled
550 properties are logged to $GIT_DIR/svn/<refname>/unhandled.log
552 Renamed and copied directories are not detected by git and hence not
553 tracked when committing to SVN. I do not plan on adding support for
554 this as it's quite difficult and time-consuming to get working for all
555 the possible corner cases (git doesn't do it, either). Committing
556 renamed and copied files are fully supported if they're similar enough
557 for git to detect them.
562 git-svn stores [svn-remote] configuration information in the
563 repository .git/config file. It is similar the core git
564 [remote] sections except 'fetch' keys do not accept glob
565 arguments; but they are instead handled by the 'branches'
566 and 'tags' keys. Since some SVN repositories are oddly
567 configured with multiple projects glob expansions such those
568 listed below are allowed:
570 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
571 [svn-remote "project-a"]
572 url = http://server.org/svn
573 branches = branches/*/project-a:refs/remotes/project-a/branches/*
574 tags = tags/*/project-a:refs/remotes/project-a/tags/*
575 trunk = trunk/project-a:refs/remotes/project-a/trunk
576 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
578 Keep in mind that the '*' (asterisk) wildcard of the local ref
579 (right of the ':') *must* be the farthest right path component;
580 however the remote wildcard may be anywhere as long as it's own
581 independent path component (surrounded by '/' or EOL). This
582 type of configuration is not automatically created by 'init' and
583 should be manually entered with a text-editor or using
584 linkgit:git-config[1]
588 linkgit:git-rebase[1]
592 Written by Eric Wong <normalperson@yhbt.net>.
596 Written by Eric Wong <normalperson@yhbt.net>.