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 provides a bidirectional flow of changes between a Subversion and a git
18 'git-svn' can track a single Subversion branch simply by using a
19 URL to the branch, follow branches laid out in the Subversion recommended
20 method (trunk, branches, tags directories) with the --stdlayout option, or
21 follow branches in any layout with the -T/-t/-b options (see options to
22 'init' below, and also the 'clone' command).
24 Once tracking a Subversion branch (with any of the above methods), the git
25 repository can be updated from Subversion by the 'fetch' command and
26 Subversion updated from git by the 'dcommit' command.
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 When retrieving svn commits into git (as part of fetch, rebase, or
66 dcommit operations), look for the first From: or Signed-off-by: line
67 in the log message and use that as the author string.
69 When committing to svn from git (as part of commit or dcommit
70 operations), if the existing log message doesn't already have a
71 From: or Signed-off-by: line, append a From: line based on the
72 git commit's author string. If you use this, then --use-log-author
73 will retrieve a valid author string for all commits.
75 For transports that SVN handles authentication for (http,
76 https, and plain svn), specify the username. For other
77 transports (eg svn+ssh://), you must include the username in
78 the URL, eg svn+ssh://foo@svn.bar.com/project
80 This allows one to specify a prefix which is prepended
81 to the names of remotes if trunk/branches/tags are
82 specified. The prefix does not automatically include a
83 trailing slash, so be sure you include one in the
84 argument if that is what you want. If --branches/-b is
85 specified, the prefix must include a trailing slash.
86 Setting a prefix is useful if you wish to track multiple
87 projects that share a common repository.
90 Fetch unfetched revisions from the Subversion remote we are
91 tracking. The name of the [svn-remote "..."] section in the
92 .git/config file may be specified as an optional command-line
96 Runs 'init' and 'fetch'. It will automatically create a
97 directory based on the basename of the URL passed to it;
98 or if a second argument is passed; it will create a directory
99 and work within that. It accepts all arguments that the
100 'init' and 'fetch' commands accept; with the exception of
101 '--fetch-all'. After a repository is cloned, the 'fetch'
102 command will be able to update revisions without affecting
103 the working tree; and the 'rebase' command will be able
104 to update the working tree with the latest changes.
107 This fetches revisions from the SVN parent of the current HEAD
108 and rebases the current (uncommitted to SVN) work against it.
110 This works similarly to `svn update` or 'git-pull' except that
111 it preserves linear history with 'git-rebase' instead of
112 'git-merge' for ease of dcommiting with 'git-svn'.
114 This accepts all options that 'git-svn fetch' and 'git-rebase'
115 accept. However, '--fetch-all' only fetches from the current
116 [svn-remote], and not all [svn-remote] definitions.
118 Like 'git-rebase'; this requires that the working tree be clean
119 and have no uncommitted changes.
123 Do not fetch remotely; only run 'git-rebase' against the
124 last fetched commit from the upstream SVN.
127 Commit each diff from a specified head directly to the SVN
128 repository, and then rebase or reset (depending on whether or
129 not there is a diff between SVN and head). This will create
130 a revision in SVN for each commit in git.
131 It is recommended that you run 'git-svn' fetch and rebase (not
132 pull or merge) your commits against the latest changes in the
134 An optional command-line argument may be specified as an
136 This is advantageous over 'set-tree' (below) because it produces
137 cleaner, more linear history.
140 After committing, do not rebase or reset.
142 Commit to this SVN URL (the full path). This is intended to
143 allow existing git-svn repositories created with one transport
144 method (e.g. `svn://` or `http://` for anonymous read) to be
145 reused if a user is later given access to an alternate transport
146 method (e.g. `svn+ssh://` or `https://`) for commit.
148 Using this option for any other purpose (don't ask)
149 is very strongly discouraged.
153 This should make it easy to look up svn log messages when svn
154 users refer to -r/--revision numbers.
156 The following features from `svn log' are supported:
159 --revision=<n>[:<n>];;
160 is supported, non-numeric args are not:
161 HEAD, NEXT, BASE, PREV, etc ...
163 it's not completely compatible with the --verbose
164 output in svn log, but reasonably close.
166 is NOT the same as --max-count, doesn't count
167 merged/excluded commits
176 shows the git commit sha1, as well
178 our version of --pretty=oneline
181 NOTE: SVN itself only stores times in UTC and nothing else. The regular svn
182 client converts the UTC time to the local time (or based on the TZ=
183 environment). This command has the same behaviour.
185 Any other arguments are passed directly to 'git-log'
188 Show what revision and author last modified each line of a file. The
189 output of this mode is format-compatible with the output of
190 `svn blame' by default. Like the SVN blame command,
191 local uncommitted changes in the working copy are ignored;
192 the version of the file in the HEAD revision is annotated. Unknown
193 arguments are passed directly to 'git-blame'.
196 Produce output in the same format as 'git-blame', but with
197 SVN revision numbers instead of git commit hashes. In this mode,
198 changes that haven't been committed to SVN (including local
199 working-copy edits) are shown as revision 0.
203 When given an SVN revision number of the form 'rN', returns the
204 corresponding git commit hash (this can optionally be followed by a
205 tree-ish to specify which branch should be searched). When given a
206 tree-ish, returns the corresponding SVN revision number.
209 You should consider using 'dcommit' instead of this command.
210 Commit specified commit or tree objects to SVN. This relies on
211 your imported fetch data being up-to-date. This makes
212 absolutely no attempts to do patching when committing to SVN, it
213 simply overwrites files with those specified in the tree or
214 commit. All merging is assumed to have taken place
215 independently of 'git-svn' functions.
218 Recursively finds the svn:ignore property on directories and
219 creates matching .gitignore files. The resulting files are staged to
220 be committed, but are not committed. Use -r/--revision to refer to a
224 Recursively finds and lists the svn:ignore property on
225 directories. The output is suitable for appending to
226 the $GIT_DIR/info/exclude file.
229 Commits the diff of two tree-ish arguments from the
230 command-line. This command does not rely on being inside an `git-svn
231 init`-ed repository. This command takes three arguments, (a) the
232 original tree to diff against, (b) the new tree result, (c) the
233 URL of the target Subversion repository. The final argument
234 (URL) may be omitted if you are working from a 'git-svn'-aware
235 repository (that has been `init`-ed with 'git-svn').
236 The -r<revision> option is required for this.
239 Shows information about a file or directory similar to what
240 `svn info' provides. Does not currently support a -r/--revision
241 argument. Use the --url option to output only the value of the
245 Lists the properties stored in the Subversion repository about a
246 given file or directory. Use -r/--revision to refer to a specific
250 Gets the Subversion property given as the first argument, for a
251 file. A specific revision can be specified with -r/--revision.
254 Shows the Subversion externals. Use -r/--revision to specify a
263 --shared[={false|true|umask|group|all|world|everybody}]::
264 --template=<template_directory>::
265 Only used with the 'init' command.
266 These are passed directly to 'git-init'.
271 Used with the 'fetch' command.
273 This allows revision ranges for partial/cauterized history
274 to be supported. $NUMBER, $NUMBER1:$NUMBER2 (numeric ranges),
275 $NUMBER:HEAD, and BASE:$NUMBER are all supported.
277 This can allow you to make partial mirrors when running fetch;
278 but is generally not recommended because history will be skipped
284 Only used with the 'set-tree' command.
286 Read a list of commits from stdin and commit them in reverse
287 order. Only the leading sha1 is read from each line, so
288 'git-rev-list --pretty=oneline' output can be used.
292 Only used with the 'dcommit', 'set-tree' and 'commit-diff' commands.
294 Remove directories from the SVN tree if there are no files left
295 behind. SVN can version empty directories, and they are not
296 removed by default if there are no files left in them. git
297 cannot version empty directories. Enabling this flag will make
298 the commit to SVN act like git.
300 config key: svn.rmdir
305 Only used with the 'dcommit', 'set-tree' and 'commit-diff' commands.
307 Edit the commit message before committing to SVN. This is off by
308 default for objects that are commits, and forced on when committing
314 --find-copies-harder::
316 Only used with the 'dcommit', 'set-tree' and 'commit-diff' commands.
318 They are both passed directly to 'git-diff-tree'; see
319 linkgit:git-diff-tree[1] for more information.
323 config key: svn.findcopiesharder
326 --authors-file=<filename>::
328 Syntax is compatible with the file used by 'git-cvsimport':
330 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
331 loginname = Joe User <user@example.com>
332 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
334 If this option is specified and 'git-svn' encounters an SVN
335 committer name that does not exist in the authors-file, 'git-svn'
336 will abort operation. The user will then have to add the
337 appropriate entry. Re-running the previous 'git-svn' command
338 after the authors-file is modified should continue operation.
340 config key: svn.authorsfile
344 Make 'git-svn' less verbose.
347 --repack-flags=<flags>::
349 These should help keep disk usage sane for large fetches
352 --repack takes an optional argument for the number of revisions
353 to fetch before repacking. This defaults to repacking every
354 1000 commits fetched if no argument is specified.
356 --repack-flags are passed directly to 'git-repack'.
359 config key: svn.repack
360 config key: svn.repackflags
365 --strategy=<strategy>::
367 These are only used with the 'dcommit' and 'rebase' commands.
369 Passed directly to 'git-rebase' when using 'dcommit' if a
370 'git-reset' cannot be used (see 'dcommit').
375 This can be used with the 'dcommit' and 'rebase' commands.
377 For 'dcommit', print out the series of git arguments that would show
378 which diffs would be committed to SVN.
380 For 'rebase', display the local branch associated with the upstream svn
381 repository associated with the current branch and the URL of svn
382 repository that will be fetched from.
393 This sets GIT_SVN_ID (instead of using the environment). This
394 allows the user to override the default refname to fetch from
395 when tracking a single URL. The 'log' and 'dcommit' commands
396 no longer require this switch as an argument.
399 --svn-remote <remote name>::
400 Specify the [svn-remote "<remote name>"] section to use,
401 this allows SVN multiple repositories to be tracked.
405 This is especially helpful when we're tracking a directory
406 that has been moved around within the repository, or if we
407 started tracking a branch and never tracked the trunk it was
408 descended from. This feature is enabled by default, use
409 --no-follow-parent to disable it.
411 config key: svn.followparent
414 CONFIG FILE-ONLY OPTIONS
415 ------------------------
419 svn-remote.<name>.noMetadata::
421 This gets rid of the 'git-svn-id:' lines at the end of every commit.
423 If you lose your .git/svn/git-svn/.rev_db file, 'git-svn' will not
424 be able to rebuild it and you won't be able to fetch again,
425 either. This is fine for one-shot imports.
427 The 'git-svn log' command will not work on repositories using
428 this, either. Using this conflicts with the 'useSvmProps'
429 option for (hopefully) obvious reasons.
432 svn-remote.<name>.useSvmProps::
434 This allows 'git-svn' to re-map repository URLs and UUIDs from
435 mirrors created using SVN::Mirror (or svk) for metadata.
437 If an SVN revision has a property, "svm:headrev", it is likely
438 that the revision was created by SVN::Mirror (also used by SVK).
439 The property contains a repository UUID and a revision. We want
440 to make it look like we are mirroring the original URL, so
441 introduce a helper function that returns the original identity
442 URL and UUID, and use it when generating metadata in commit
445 svn.useSvnsyncProps::
446 svn-remote.<name>.useSvnsyncprops::
447 Similar to the useSvmProps option; this is for users
448 of the svnsync(1) command distributed with SVN 1.4.x and
451 svn-remote.<name>.rewriteRoot::
452 This allows users to create repositories from alternate
453 URLs. For example, an administrator could run 'git-svn' on the
454 server locally (accessing via file://) but wish to distribute
455 the repository with a public http:// or svn:// URL in the
456 metadata so users of it will see the public URL.
460 Since the noMetadata, rewriteRoot, useSvnsyncProps and useSvmProps
461 options all affect the metadata generated and used by 'git-svn'; they
462 *must* be set in the configuration file before any history is imported
463 and these settings should never be changed once they are set.
465 Additionally, only one of these four options can be used per-svn-remote
466 section because they affect the 'git-svn-id:' metadata line.
472 Tracking and contributing to the trunk of a Subversion-managed project:
474 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
475 # Clone a repo (like git clone):
476 git svn clone http://svn.foo.org/project/trunk
477 # Enter the newly cloned directory:
479 # You should be on master branch, double-check with git-branch
481 # Do some work and commit locally to git:
483 # Something is committed to SVN, rebase your local changes against the
484 # latest changes in SVN:
486 # Now commit your changes (that were committed previously using git) to SVN,
487 # as well as automatically updating your working HEAD:
489 # Append svn:ignore settings to the default git exclude file:
490 git svn show-ignore >> .git/info/exclude
491 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
493 Tracking and contributing to an entire Subversion-managed project
494 (complete with a trunk, tags and branches):
496 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
497 # Clone a repo (like git clone):
498 git svn clone http://svn.foo.org/project -T trunk -b branches -t tags
499 # View all branches and tags you have cloned:
501 # Reset your master to trunk (or any other branch, replacing 'trunk'
502 # with the appropriate name):
503 git reset --hard remotes/trunk
504 # You may only dcommit to one branch/tag/trunk at a time. The usage
505 # of dcommit/rebase/show-ignore should be the same as above.
506 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
508 The initial 'git-svn clone' can be quite time-consuming
509 (especially for large Subversion repositories). If multiple
510 people (or one person with multiple machines) want to use
511 'git-svn' to interact with the same Subversion repository, you can
512 do the initial 'git-svn clone' to a repository on a server and
513 have each person clone that repository with 'git-clone':
515 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
516 # Do the initial import on a server
517 ssh server "cd /pub && git svn clone http://svn.foo.org/project
518 # Clone locally - make sure the refs/remotes/ space matches the server
522 git remote add origin server:/pub/project
523 git config --add remote.origin.fetch '+refs/remotes/*:refs/remotes/*'
525 # Initialize git-svn locally (be sure to use the same URL and -T/-b/-t options as were used on server)
526 git svn init http://svn.foo.org/project
527 # Pull the latest changes from Subversion
529 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
531 REBASE VS. PULL/MERGE
532 ---------------------
534 Originally, 'git-svn' recommended that the 'remotes/git-svn' branch be
535 pulled or merged from. This is because the author favored
536 `git svn set-tree B` to commit a single head rather than the
537 `git svn set-tree A..B` notation to commit multiple commits.
539 If you use `git svn set-tree A..B` to commit several diffs and you do
540 not have the latest remotes/git-svn merged into my-branch, you should
541 use `git svn rebase` to update your work branch instead of `git pull` or
542 `git merge`. `pull`/`merge' can cause non-linear history to be flattened
543 when committing into SVN, which can lead to merge commits reversing
544 previous commits in SVN.
548 Merge tracking in Subversion is lacking and doing branched development
549 with Subversion can be cumbersome as a result. While 'git-svn' can track
550 copy history (including branches and tags) for repositories adopting a
551 standard layout, it cannot yet represent merge history that happened
552 inside git back upstream to SVN users. Therefore it is advised that
553 users keep history as linear as possible inside git to ease
554 compatibility with SVN (see the CAVEATS section below).
559 For the sake of simplicity and interoperating with a less-capable system
560 (SVN), it is recommended that all 'git-svn' users clone, fetch and dcommit
561 directly from the SVN server, and avoid all 'git-clone'/'pull'/'merge'/'push'
562 operations between git repositories and branches. The recommended
563 method of exchanging code between git branches and users is
564 'git-format-patch' and 'git-am', or just 'dcommit'ing to the SVN repository.
566 Running 'git-merge' or 'git-pull' is NOT recommended on a branch you
567 plan to 'dcommit' from. Subversion does not represent merges in any
568 reasonable or useful fashion; so users using Subversion cannot see any
569 merges you've made. Furthermore, if you merge or pull from a git branch
570 that is a mirror of an SVN branch, 'dcommit' may commit to the wrong
573 'git-clone' does not clone branches under the refs/remotes/ hierarchy or
574 any 'git-svn' metadata, or config. So repositories created and managed with
575 using 'git-svn' should use 'rsync' for cloning, if cloning is to be done
578 Since 'dcommit' uses rebase internally, any git branches you 'git-push' to
579 before 'dcommit' on will require forcing an overwrite of the existing ref
580 on the remote repository. This is generally considered bad practice,
581 see the linkgit:git-push[1] documentation for details.
583 Do not use the --amend option of linkgit:git-commit[1] on a change you've
584 already dcommitted. It is considered bad practice to --amend commits
585 you've already pushed to a remote repository for other users, and
586 dcommit with SVN is analogous to that.
591 We ignore all SVN properties except svn:executable. Any unhandled
592 properties are logged to $GIT_DIR/svn/<refname>/unhandled.log
594 Renamed and copied directories are not detected by git and hence not
595 tracked when committing to SVN. I do not plan on adding support for
596 this as it's quite difficult and time-consuming to get working for all
597 the possible corner cases (git doesn't do it, either). Committing
598 renamed and copied files are fully supported if they're similar enough
599 for git to detect them.
604 'git-svn' stores [svn-remote] configuration information in the
605 repository .git/config file. It is similar the core git
606 [remote] sections except 'fetch' keys do not accept glob
607 arguments; but they are instead handled by the 'branches'
608 and 'tags' keys. Since some SVN repositories are oddly
609 configured with multiple projects glob expansions such those
610 listed below are allowed:
612 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
613 [svn-remote "project-a"]
614 url = http://server.org/svn
615 branches = branches/*/project-a:refs/remotes/project-a/branches/*
616 tags = tags/*/project-a:refs/remotes/project-a/tags/*
617 trunk = trunk/project-a:refs/remotes/project-a/trunk
618 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
620 Keep in mind that the '*' (asterisk) wildcard of the local ref
621 (right of the ':') *must* be the farthest right path component;
622 however the remote wildcard may be anywhere as long as it's own
623 independent path component (surrounded by '/' or EOL). This
624 type of configuration is not automatically created by 'init' and
625 should be manually entered with a text-editor or using 'git-config'.
629 linkgit:git-rebase[1]
633 Written by Eric Wong <normalperson@yhbt.net>.
637 Written by Eric Wong <normalperson@yhbt.net>.