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 gitlink: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>;;
47 These are optional command-line options for init. Each of
48 these flags can point to a relative repository path
49 (--tags=project/tags') or a full url
50 (--tags=https://foo.org/project/tags)
52 Set the 'noMetadata' option in the [svn-remote] config.
54 Set the 'useSvmProps' option in the [svn-remote] config.
56 Set the 'useSvnsyncProps' option in the [svn-remote] config.
57 --rewrite-root=<URL>;;
58 Set the 'rewriteRoot' option in the [svn-remote] config.
60 For transports that SVN handles authentication for (http,
61 https, and plain svn), specify the username. For other
62 transports (eg svn+ssh://), you must include the username in
63 the URL, eg svn+ssh://foo@svn.bar.com/project
65 This allows one to specify a prefix which is prepended
66 to the names of remotes if trunk/branches/tags are
67 specified. The prefix does not automatically include a
68 trailing slash, so be sure you include one in the
69 argument if that is what you want. This is useful if
70 you wish to track multiple projects that share a common
74 Fetch unfetched revisions from the Subversion remote we are
75 tracking. The name of the [svn-remote "..."] section in the
76 .git/config file may be specified as an optional command-line
80 Runs 'init' and 'fetch'. It will automatically create a
81 directory based on the basename of the URL passed to it;
82 or if a second argument is passed; it will create a directory
83 and work within that. It accepts all arguments that the
84 'init' and 'fetch' commands accept; with the exception of
85 '--fetch-all'. After a repository is cloned, the 'fetch'
86 command will be able to update revisions without affecting
87 the working tree; and the 'rebase' command will be able
88 to update the working tree with the latest changes.
91 This fetches revisions from the SVN parent of the current HEAD
92 and rebases the current (uncommitted to SVN) work against it.
94 This works similarly to 'svn update' or 'git-pull' except that
95 it preserves linear history with 'git-rebase' instead of
96 'git-merge' for ease of dcommit-ing with git-svn.
98 This accepts all options that 'git-svn fetch' and 'git-rebase'
99 accepts. However '--fetch-all' only fetches from the current
100 [svn-remote], and not all [svn-remote] definitions.
102 Like 'git-rebase'; this requires that the working tree be clean
103 and have no uncommitted changes.
107 Do not fetch remotely; only run 'git-rebase' against the
108 last fetched commit from the upstream SVN.
111 Commit each diff from a specified head directly to the SVN
112 repository, and then rebase or reset (depending on whether or
113 not there is a diff between SVN and head). This will create
114 a revision in SVN for each commit in git.
115 It is recommended that you run git-svn fetch and rebase (not
116 pull or merge) your commits against the latest changes in the
118 An optional command-line argument may be specified as an
120 This is advantageous over 'set-tree' (below) because it produces
121 cleaner, more linear history.
124 After committing, do not rebase or reset.
128 This should make it easy to look up svn log messages when svn
129 users refer to -r/--revision numbers.
131 The following features from `svn log' are supported:
134 --revision=<n>[:<n>];;
135 is supported, non-numeric args are not:
136 HEAD, NEXT, BASE, PREV, etc ...
138 it's not completely compatible with the --verbose
139 output in svn log, but reasonably close.
141 is NOT the same as --max-count, doesn't count
142 merged/excluded commits
151 shows the git commit sha1, as well
153 our version of --pretty=oneline
156 Any other arguments are passed directly to `git log'
160 When given an SVN revision number of the form 'rN', returns the
161 corresponding git commit hash (this can optionally be followed by a
162 tree-ish to specify which branch should be searched). When given a
163 tree-ish, returns the corresponding SVN revision number.
166 You should consider using 'dcommit' instead of this command.
167 Commit specified commit or tree objects to SVN. This relies on
168 your imported fetch data being up-to-date. This makes
169 absolutely no attempts to do patching when committing to SVN, it
170 simply overwrites files with those specified in the tree or
171 commit. All merging is assumed to have taken place
172 independently of git-svn functions.
175 Recursively finds and lists the svn:ignore property on
176 directories. The output is suitable for appending to
177 the $GIT_DIR/info/exclude file.
180 Commits the diff of two tree-ish arguments from the
181 command-line. This command is intended for interoperability with
182 git-svnimport and does not rely on being inside an git-svn
183 init-ed repository. This command takes three arguments, (a) the
184 original tree to diff against, (b) the new tree result, (c) the
185 URL of the target Subversion repository. The final argument
186 (URL) may be omitted if you are working from a git-svn-aware
187 repository (that has been init-ed with git-svn).
188 The -r<revision> option is required for this.
196 --shared[={false|true|umask|group|all|world|everybody}]::
197 --template=<template_directory>::
198 Only used with the 'init' command.
199 These are passed directly to gitlink:git-init[1].
204 Used with the 'fetch' command.
206 This allows revision ranges for partial/cauterized history
207 to be supported. $NUMBER, $NUMBER1:$NUMBER2 (numeric ranges),
208 $NUMBER:HEAD, and BASE:$NUMBER are all supported.
210 This can allow you to make partial mirrors when running fetch;
211 but is generally not recommended because history will be skipped
217 Only used with the 'set-tree' command.
219 Read a list of commits from stdin and commit them in reverse
220 order. Only the leading sha1 is read from each line, so
221 git-rev-list --pretty=oneline output can be used.
225 Only used with the 'dcommit', 'set-tree' and 'commit-diff' commands.
227 Remove directories from the SVN tree if there are no files left
228 behind. SVN can version empty directories, and they are not
229 removed by default if there are no files left in them. git
230 cannot version empty directories. Enabling this flag will make
231 the commit to SVN act like git.
233 config key: svn.rmdir
238 Only used with the 'dcommit', 'set-tree' and 'commit-diff' commands.
240 Edit the commit message before committing to SVN. This is off by
241 default for objects that are commits, and forced on when committing
247 --find-copies-harder::
249 Only used with the 'dcommit', 'set-tree' and 'commit-diff' commands.
251 They are both passed directly to git-diff-tree see
252 gitlink:git-diff-tree[1] for more information.
256 config key: svn.findcopiesharder
259 --authors-file=<filename>::
261 Syntax is compatible with the files used by git-svnimport and
264 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
265 loginname = Joe User <user@example.com>
266 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
268 If this option is specified and git-svn encounters an SVN
269 committer name that does not exist in the authors-file, git-svn
270 will abort operation. The user will then have to add the
271 appropriate entry. Re-running the previous git-svn command
272 after the authors-file is modified should continue operation.
274 config key: svn.authorsfile
278 Make git-svn less verbose.
281 --repack-flags=<flags>::
283 These should help keep disk usage sane for large fetches
286 --repack takes an optional argument for the number of revisions
287 to fetch before repacking. This defaults to repacking every
288 1000 commits fetched if no argument is specified.
290 --repack-flags are passed directly to gitlink:git-repack[1].
293 config key: svn.repack
294 config key: svn.repackflags
299 --strategy=<strategy>::
301 These are only used with the 'dcommit' and 'rebase' commands.
303 Passed directly to git-rebase when using 'dcommit' if a
304 'git-reset' cannot be used (see dcommit).
309 This is only used with the 'dcommit' command.
311 Print out the series of git arguments that would show
312 which diffs would be committed to SVN.
323 This sets GIT_SVN_ID (instead of using the environment). This
324 allows the user to override the default refname to fetch from
325 when tracking a single URL. The 'log' and 'dcommit' commands
326 no longer require this switch as an argument.
329 --svn-remote <remote name>::
330 Specify the [svn-remote "<remote name>"] section to use,
331 this allows SVN multiple repositories to be tracked.
335 This is especially helpful when we're tracking a directory
336 that has been moved around within the repository, or if we
337 started tracking a branch and never tracked the trunk it was
338 descended from. This feature is enabled by default, use
339 --no-follow-parent to disable it.
341 config key: svn.followparent
344 CONFIG FILE-ONLY OPTIONS
345 ------------------------
349 svn-remote.<name>.noMetadata::
351 This gets rid of the git-svn-id: lines at the end of every commit.
353 If you lose your .git/svn/git-svn/.rev_db file, git-svn will not
354 be able to rebuild it and you won't be able to fetch again,
355 either. This is fine for one-shot imports.
357 The 'git-svn log' command will not work on repositories using
358 this, either. Using this conflicts with the 'useSvmProps'
359 option for (hopefully) obvious reasons.
362 svn-remote.<name>.useSvmProps::
364 This allows git-svn to re-map repository URLs and UUIDs from
365 mirrors created using SVN::Mirror (or svk) for metadata.
367 If an SVN revision has a property, "svm:headrev", it is likely
368 that the revision was created by SVN::Mirror (also used by SVK).
369 The property contains a repository UUID and a revision. We want
370 to make it look like we are mirroring the original URL, so
371 introduce a helper function that returns the original identity
372 URL and UUID, and use it when generating metadata in commit
375 svn.useSvnsyncProps::
376 svn-remote.<name>.useSvnsyncprops::
377 Similar to the useSvmProps option; this is for users
378 of the svnsync(1) command distributed with SVN 1.4.x and
381 svn-remote.<name>.rewriteRoot::
382 This allows users to create repositories from alternate
383 URLs. For example, an administrator could run git-svn on the
384 server locally (accessing via file://) but wish to distribute
385 the repository with a public http:// or svn:// URL in the
386 metadata so users of it will see the public URL.
388 Since the noMetadata, rewriteRoot, useSvnsyncProps and useSvmProps
389 options all affect the metadata generated and used by git-svn; they
390 *must* be set in the configuration file before any history is imported
391 and these settings should never be changed once they are set.
393 Additionally, only one of these four options can be used per-svn-remote
394 section because they affect the 'git-svn-id:' metadata line.
401 Tracking and contributing to a the trunk of a Subversion-managed project:
403 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
404 # Clone a repo (like git clone):
405 git-svn clone http://svn.foo.org/project/trunk
406 # Enter the newly cloned directory:
408 # You should be on master branch, double-check with git-branch
410 # Do some work and commit locally to git:
412 # Something is committed to SVN, rebase your local changes against the
413 # latest changes in SVN:
415 # Now commit your changes (that were committed previously using git) to SVN,
416 # as well as automatically updating your working HEAD:
418 # Append svn:ignore settings to the default git exclude file:
419 git-svn show-ignore >> .git/info/exclude
420 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
422 Tracking and contributing to an entire Subversion-managed project
423 (complete with a trunk, tags and branches):
425 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
426 # Clone a repo (like git clone):
427 git-svn clone http://svn.foo.org/project -T trunk -b branches -t tags
428 # View all branches and tags you have cloned:
430 # Reset your master to trunk (or any other branch, replacing 'trunk'
431 # with the appropriate name):
432 git reset --hard remotes/trunk
433 # You may only dcommit to one branch/tag/trunk at a time. The usage
434 # of dcommit/rebase/show-ignore should be the same as above.
435 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
437 REBASE VS. PULL/MERGE
438 ---------------------
440 Originally, git-svn recommended that the remotes/git-svn branch be
441 pulled or merged from. This is because the author favored
442 'git-svn set-tree B' to commit a single head rather than the
443 'git-svn set-tree A..B' notation to commit multiple commits.
445 If you use 'git-svn set-tree A..B' to commit several diffs and you do
446 not have the latest remotes/git-svn merged into my-branch, you should
447 use 'git-svn rebase' to update your work branch instead of 'git pull' or
448 'git merge'. 'pull/merge' can cause non-linear history to be flattened
449 when committing into SVN, which can lead to merge commits reversing
450 previous commits in SVN.
454 Merge tracking in Subversion is lacking and doing branched development
455 with Subversion is cumbersome as a result. git-svn does not do
456 automated merge/branch tracking by default and leaves it entirely up to
457 the user on the git side. git-svn does however follow copy
458 history of the directory that it is tracking, however (much like
459 how 'svn log' works).
464 We ignore all SVN properties except svn:executable. Any unhandled
465 properties are logged to $GIT_DIR/svn/<refname>/unhandled.log
467 Renamed and copied directories are not detected by git and hence not
468 tracked when committing to SVN. I do not plan on adding support for
469 this as it's quite difficult and time-consuming to get working for all
470 the possible corner cases (git doesn't do it, either). Committing
471 renamed and copied files are fully supported if they're similar enough
472 for git to detect them.
477 git-svn stores [svn-remote] configuration information in the
478 repository .git/config file. It is similar the core git
479 [remote] sections except 'fetch' keys do not accept glob
480 arguments; but they are instead handled by the 'branches'
481 and 'tags' keys. Since some SVN repositories are oddly
482 configured with multiple projects glob expansions such those
483 listed below are allowed:
485 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
486 [svn-remote "project-a"]
487 url = http://server.org/svn
488 branches = branches/*/project-a:refs/remotes/project-a/branches/*
489 tags = tags/*/project-a:refs/remotes/project-a/tags/*
490 trunk = trunk/project-a:refs/remotes/project-a/trunk
491 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
493 Keep in mind that the '*' (asterisk) wildcard of the local ref
494 (left of the ':') *must* be the farthest right path component;
495 however the remote wildcard may be anywhere as long as it's own
496 independent path componet (surrounded by '/' or EOL). This
497 type of configuration is not automatically created by 'init' and
498 should be manually entered with a text-editor or using
499 gitlink:git-config[1]
503 gitlink:git-rebase[1]
507 Written by Eric Wong <normalperson@yhbt.net>.
511 Written by Eric Wong <normalperson@yhbt.net>.