git-svn starting with an empty svn repository

git-svn starting with an empty svn repository

[Penny Leach]

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Dear list,

This is maybe an abuse of what git-svn is designed to do, but nevertheless
I need to do it.

I'm working with a project (Moodle) that still uses CVS for its upstream
VCS.  The friendly folk at Catalyst in NZ run a git import of this, that a
lot of the community uses as their (read only) upstream instead of CVS.

So far so good.

However, now for various political reasons, I must (at least) publish
changes to SVN.  I'm going to be patch trading a lot between my work
branches, and Moodle's CVS directly and I don't want to lose the power that
git gives me while doing that.  So I want to keep git as the tool I use for
development, that acts as a go-between for me between CVS and SVN.

So what I'd really like to do is something like this:

- clone from Catalyst's git mirror
- push that to SVN using git-svn
- keep working, committing patches to Moodle CVS, and pulling from Catalyst
  regularly, while pushing both my local changes and new pulled upstream
  patches, to SVN, using git-svn

The problem seems to be that I'm starting out with an *empty* SVN
repository.  Almost all of the documentation I've found on this topic is
for going from an existing SVN repository to git.

Theoretically at least, the opposite direction should also be possible, but
I'm having a hard time figuring it out.  I followed the steps outlined in
the comments here:
http://quirkygba.blogspot.com/2007/10/using-git-with-google-code-hosting.html

But I didn't have much luck, it seems as though the rebased trunk branch
doesn't share any ancestry with the original Catalyst sources, so regularly
updating is going to be hard (unless I create graft entries for each time I
do it I guess?).

Not to mention the fact that it's 8 years of history that takes a while to
import and after about 5 tries I didn't even manage to get git svn to
dcommit it and got impatient and cross and stopped trying.

So really I want to know is - is this even possible? Is using the above
steps along with the graft approach the best|only way to do it?  How
brittle is this to maintain, if I even manage to get it imported?

Any ideas or advice?

For reference, the CVS/Git import can be cloned here:
http://git.catalyst.net.nz/git/moodle-r2.git but will take a long time to
come down.

Cheers for any help.

Penny


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Penny Leach | http://mjollnir.org | http://she.geek.nz
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Re: git-svn starting with an empty svn repository

[Pascal Obry]

Penny,

I've been trying to do the exact same things. I'm using Git to import
from CVS and export into a Subversion repository.

What I have done:

- I have used cvsimport for the CVS repository (no problem)

- I have created an empty repository using svnadmin

- I have imported the svn trunk into Git

- I'm cherry-picking any new commits from my cvs-imported branch
(master) into the git-svn one (named svn-trunk)

For this last point, I'm using this code sniped:

<<
for i in $(git cherry svn-trunk master | sed -n 's/^+ //p'); do
   echo Applying $i;
   (git cherry-pick --no-commit $i &&
    git log --pretty=format:"Author: %an <%ae>%nDate  :
%ad%n%n%s%n%b" -1 $i > /tmp/cm &&
    git commit --file=/tmp/cm) || (echo Cannot commit $i; exit 1)
done
>>

I'm editing the log to properly record original author and date.

There is maybe better solutions...

-- 

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--| Pascal Obry                           Team-Ada Member
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Re: git-svn starting with an empty svn repository

[Penny Leach]

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Thanks for the reply!  I'm glad I'm not the only person crazy enough to
attempt this :)

On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 03:19:13PM +0100, Pascal Obry wrote:
> - I have created an empty repository using svnadmin
> - I have imported the svn trunk into Git
> - I'm cherry-picking any new commits from my cvs-imported branch
> (master) into the git-svn one (named svn-trunk)

Right - and you used this method to import the original history into the
svn-trunk branch, as well as any new patches? Or did you do a once off
import of the history using a different method?

Out of interest - how long is the history you're importing?  Mine is about
32,000 commits and it takes forever to import into SVN (only to get to a
broken point and have to start again...)


Penny

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Penny Leach | http://mjollnir.org | http://she.geek.nz
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Re: git-svn starting with an empty svn repository

[Pascal Obry]

Penny,

> Right - and you used this method to import the original history into the
> svn-trunk branch, as well as any new patches?

Yes.

> Out of interest - how long is the history you're importing?  Mine is about
> 32,000 commits and it takes forever to import into SVN (only to get to a
> broken point and have to start again...)

The repository is having today 28347 commits exactly, so it is close in
size to yours. I have migrated something like 27800 commits initialy,
AFAIR it tooks something like 28 hours to complete.

Pascal.

-- 

--|------------------------------------------------------
--| Pascal Obry                           Team-Ada Member
--| 45, rue Gabriel Peri - 78114 Magny Les Hameaux FRANCE
--|------------------------------------------------------
--|              http://www.obry.net
--| "The best way to travel is by means of imagination"
--|
--| gpg --keyserver wwwkeys.pgp.net --recv-key C1082595