Re: Another question about importing SVN with fast-import

["David Frech" <david@nimblemachines.com>]

On 7/16/07, Julian Phillips <julian@quantumfyre.co.uk> wrote:
> Now the question.  Shawn recently added C and R operations - almost as
> soon as they were asked for too.  However, how do you copy a file from a
> particular revision?  I have just hit a point where someone deleted a
> directory, and then copied one of the files from that directory back from
> an old revision (as two separate commits).  Since I'm not tracking any
> branch contents in my front-end, and the copy operation only works from
> the current branch head I seem to be stuck ... or have I missed something?

I have to second Julian's question.

The only things I have left to implement (in my svn dump to
fast-import translator) before I can call my code "complete"  are
branch copies (which will generate "from" lines in commits so
fast-import can properly initialize the new branch) and a generic
"copy <path> from <rev>" that Julian also needs.

I mark my commits and keep track of the mapping from svn revs to git
commits, so when the svn dump asks for a <path> from a specific <svn
rev> I can correlate that to a mark (ie, a git commit). But I can't
tell fast-import to *do* anything with it.

This is kind of a request and a comment/question. The request is:
there is no way to do *reasonably* in the front end what fast-import
can do somewhat reasonably: namely, copy a <path> (file or directory!)
from an arbitrary previously committed revision/mark to the current
branch.

The comment/question is: how different is this, really, from being
able to  specify a "from" line in a commit? In both cases I'm asking
fast-import to reach into its memory (or the repo) and pull out a
tree, and to add (some or all of it) to my current branch. Isn't the
kind of generic C command that Julian and I are asking for the same
thing, only instead of taking the whole tree (from the specified
commit) it takes a single file or directory?

I hope I haven't missed the point entirely.

Lastly, do we really need "R"? With this generic copy - and I think
there should be *only* a generic version, not a "streamlined local
copy" version and a "reach into history arbitrarily" version - we can,
as an earlier poster pointed out, do R by doing a C and then a D. This
is, in fact, how svn dump files represent file and directory renames.

It would be nice to keep the fast-import command set small and orthogonal.

My few cents.

Cheers,

- David

-- 
If I have not seen farther, it is because I have stood in the
footsteps of giants.