Re: Problem with case-insensitive file cleanup

["James Youngman" <jay@gnu.org>]

On 5/3/07, Jim Meyering <jim@meyering.net> wrote:

> > Earlier this week, I reported a problem when two case-insensitive files
> > were created, which is a no-no for checkouts on Mac HFS+ or Windows-based
> > platforms [1].  The problem was quickly corrected in CVS (note that
> > _Exit.texi now lives in the attic [2]).  But somehow the git repository
> > still thinks that _Exit.texi belongs to the current tree [3], which leads
> > to this confusing state on a case-insensitive clone:
>
> I've just removed that file manually and pushed the result.
> I suppose that happened because something went wrong with the
> automated git-cvsimport run.
>
> The current procedure is to rsync the CVS repository,
> use that via git-cvsimport into an existing .git repository,
> and then to push the result to savannah.
>
> Obviously, before we do the final CVS-to-GIT switch, I'll rerun
> git-cvsimport from scratch, rather relying on the incrementally-built-up one.

I have had related problems using git-cvsimport with the GNU findutils
source base and was eventually reduced to deleting the git repository
into which I was pushing the git-cvsimport result.    I had added a
directory to the CVS repository (findutils/build-aux) and it was not
showing up in the target git repository (i.e. the local directory I
was specifying as the argument of -C).

Fortunately since git is content-oriented (has foo-nature, whatever,
insert hand-wave here), once I have repeated the entire cvsimport
operation, pushing the regenerated result to the public git repository
only required an incremental amount of work (bandwdth).

But suffice to say, I do not believe that git-cvsimport is very
reliable.   People more familiar with git than I point the finger at
cvsps, but to be honest I don't know enough about either program to
arbitrate.

People also pointed me at alternatives to git-cvsimport but they all
had one or more of these drawbacks:
1. No support for incremental import
2. No support for tags
3. No support for branches

James.