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This is the svn trunk path:

http://svn/path/libs/trunk/mylib

And here is the branch path:

http://svn/path/libs/branches/mylib/mylib-feature-branch

I need to migrate only the branch to git, but I also need its trunk history before the branch was created.

The following command fetches only the branch history:

git svn clone http://svn/path/libs/branches/mylib/mylib-feature-branch

I have read this answer, but could not figure out how I should change the git svn clone command to have the full history of the branch.

halfer
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B Faley
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  • Are you using this as one-time migration and then only git from there on, or do you want to use Git as frontend for the SVN server, committing back Git commits to the SVN server? – Vampire Oct 02 '16 at 18:16
  • @Vampire This is going to be a one-time migration. – B Faley Oct 02 '16 at 22:22

1 Answers1

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git-svn is not the right tool for one-time conversions of repositories or repository parts. It is a great tool if you want to use Git as frontend for an existing SVN server, but for one-time conversions you should not use git-svn, but svn2git which is much more suited for this use-case.

There are pleny tools called svn2git, the probably best one is the KDE one from https://github.com/svn-all-fast-export/svn2git. I strongly recommend using that svn2git tool. It is the best I know available out there and it is very flexible in what you can do with its rules files.

You will easily be able to set up the rules file so that exactly your branch and its history will get migrated.

If you are not 100% about the history of your repository, svneverever from http://blog.hartwork.org/?p=763 is a great tool to investigate the history of an SVN repository when migrating it to Git.

Even though git-svn is easier to start with, here are some further reasons why using the KDE svn2git instead of git-svn is superior, besides its flexibility:

  • the history is rebuilt much better and cleaner by svn2git (if the correct one is used), this is especially the case for more complex histories with branches and merges and so on
  • the tags are real tags and not branches in Git
  • with git-svn the tags contain an extra empty commit which also makes them not part of the branches, so a normal fetch will not get them until you give --tags to the command as by default only tags pointing to fetched branches are fetched also. With the proper svn2git tags are where they belong
  • if you changed layout in SVN you can easily configure this with svn2git, with git-svn you will loose history eventually
  • with svn2git you can also split one SVN repository into multiple Git repositories easily
  • or combine multiple SVN repositories in the same SVN root into one Git repository easily
  • the conversion is a gazillion times faster with the correct svn2git than with git-svn

There are many reasons why git-svn is worse and the KDE svn2git is superior. :-)

Vampire
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  • Hi, I am getting the same `svn_dirent_join: Assertion svn_dirent_is_canonical(base, pool) failed.` error as discussed [here](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/38770736/svn2git-object-reference-error#comment64942888_38784776). Unfortunately the solution on the github has been deleted. Could you please tell me what was the problem? – B Faley Oct 04 '16 at 06:26
  • oh, I think I need to run commands directly on the svn server, right? – B Faley Oct 04 '16 at 06:49
  • As the documentation says, you have to have a local copy of the SVN directory. Whether you download the repo to your local box or execute `svn2git` on the SVN server does not matter much. – Vampire Oct 04 '16 at 09:28
  • And why do you say the solution was deleted on GitHub? The first comment bears the solution. – Vampire Oct 04 '16 at 09:30
  • Do you know how I can download the repo to my local box? I cannot seem to find the command. – B Faley Oct 04 '16 at 09:36
  • The first comment on that post is "Let's try it then... ". I think you meant another comment bears the solution. – B Faley Oct 04 '16 at 09:38
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    No, I didn't mean that. You said the solution was deleted on GitHub and I said this is wrong, the first comment on that GitHub issue bears the solution (not the first comment on SO ;-)) If you have access to the SVN server box, just use any file copying tool like SFTP, RSYNC, SCP or whatever. If not, you can still use something like `rsvndump` as shown in the documentation of svneverever that I also linked in the answer: https://github.com/hartwork/svneverever – Vampire Oct 04 '16 at 09:44
  • Well, there was probably a github server problem that I could not open the page couple of hours ago. I can see it now, thanks :) let me give it a try... – B Faley Oct 04 '16 at 09:48
  • I finally got it working and everything migrated smoothly as I needed. Thanks a lot dude! – B Faley Oct 30 '16 at 09:08