GIT-SVN(1)

NAME
git-svn - bidirectional operation between a single Subversion branch and git

SYNOPSIS
git-svn <command> [options] [arguments]

DESCRIPTION
git-svn is a simple conduit for changesets between a single Subversion branch and git.

git-svn is not to be confused with git-svnimport. The were designed with very different goals in mind.

git-svn is designed for an individual developer who wants a bidirectional flow of changesets between a single branch in Subversion and an arbitrary number of branches in git. git-svnimport is designed for read-only operation on repositories that match a particular layout (albeit the recommended one by SVN developers).

For importing svn, git-svnimport is potentially more powerful when operating on repositories organized under the recommended trunk/branch/tags structure, and should be faster, too.

git-svn mostly ignores the very limited view of branching that Subversion has. This allows git-svn to be much easier to use, especially on repositories that are not organized in a manner that git-svnimport is designed for.

COMMANDS

init
    Creates an empty git repository with additional metadata directories for git-svn. The Subversion URL must be specified as a command-line argument.

fetch
    Fetch unfetched revisions from the Subversion URL we are tracking. refs/remotes/git-svn will be updated to the latest revision.

    Note: You should never attempt to modify the remotes/git-svn
    branch outside of git-svn.  Instead, create a branch from
    remotes/git-svn and work on that branch.  Use the 'commit'
    command (see below) to write git commits back to
    remotes/git-svn.

    See 'Additional Fetch Arguments' if you are interested in
    manually joining branches on commit.

commit
    Commit specified commit or tree objects to SVN. This relies on your imported fetch data being up-to-date. This makes absolutely no attempts to do patching when committing to SVN, it simply overwrites files with those specified in the tree or commit. All merging is assumed to have taken place independently of git-svn functions.

rebuild
    Not a part of daily usage, but this is a useful command if you've just cloned a repository (using git-clone) that was tracked with git-svn. Unfortunately, git-clone does not clone git-svn metadata and the svn working tree that git-svn uses for its operations. This rebuilds the metadata so git-svn can resume fetch operations. A Subversion URL may be optionally specified at the command-line if the directory/repository you're tracking has moved or changed protocols.

show-ignore
    Recursively finds and lists the svn:ignore property on directories. The output is suitable for appending to the $GIT_DIR/info/exclude file.

OPTIONS

-r <ARG> , --revision <ARG>
    Only used with the fetch command.

    Takes any valid -r<argument> svn would accept and passes it
    directly to svn. -r<ARG1>:<ARG2> ranges and "{" DATE "}" syntax
    is also supported.  This is passed directly to svn, see svn
    documentation for more details.

    This can allow you to make partial mirrors when running fetch.

- , --stdin
    Only used with the commit command.

    Read a list of commits from stdin and commit them in reverse
    order.  Only the leading sha1 is read from each line, so
    git-rev-list --pretty=oneline output can be used.

--rmdir
    Only used with the commit command.

    Remove directories from the SVN tree if there are no files left
    behind.  SVN can version empty directories, and they are not
    removed by default if there are no files left in them.  git
    cannot version empty directories.  Enabling this flag will make
    the commit to SVN act like git.

    repo-config key: svn.rmdir

-e , --edit
    Only used with the commit command.

    Edit the commit message before committing to SVN.  This is off by
    default for objects that are commits, and forced on when committing
    tree objects.

    repo-config key: svn.edit

-l<num> , --find-copies-harder
    Both of these are only used with the commit command.

    They are both passed directly to git-diff-tree see
    git-diff-tree(1) for more information.

    repo-config key: svn.l
    repo-config key: svn.findcopiesharder

-A<filename> , --authors-file=<filename>
    Syntax is compatible with the files used by git-svnimport and git-cvsimport:

    loginname = Joe User <user@example.com>

    If this option is specified and git-svn encounters an SVN
    committer name that does not exist in the authors-file, git-svn
    will abort operation. The user will then have to add the
    appropriate entry.  Re-running the previous git-svn command
    after the authors-file is modified should continue operation.

    repo-config key: svn.authors-file

ADVANCED OPTIONS

-b<refname> , --branch <refname>
    Used with fetch or commit.

    This can be used to join arbitrary git branches to remotes/git-svn
    on new commits where the tree object is equivalent.

    When used with different GIT_SVN_ID values, tags and branches in
    SVN can be tracked this way, as can some merges where the heads
    end up having completely equivalent content.  This can even be
    used to track branches across multiple SVN _repositories_.

    This option may be specified multiple times, once for each
    branch.

    repo-config key: svn.branch

-i<GIT_SVN_ID> , --id <GIT_SVN_ID>
    This sets GIT_SVN_ID (instead of using the environment). See the section on "Tracking Multiple Repositories or Branches" for more information on using GIT_SVN_ID.

COMPATIBILITY OPTIONS

--upgrade
    Only used with the rebuild command.

    Run this if you used an old version of git-svn that used
    "git-svn-HEAD" instead of "remotes/git-svn" as the branch
    for tracking the remote.

--no-ignore-externals
    Only used with the fetch and rebuild command.

    By default, git-svn passes --ignore-externals to svn to avoid
    fetching svn:external trees into git.  Pass this flag to enable
    externals tracking directly via git.

    Versions of svn that do not support --ignore-externals are
    automatically detected and this flag will be automatically
    enabled for them.

    Otherwise, do not enable this flag unless you know what you're
    doing.

    repo-config key: svn.noignoreexternals

  Basic Examples
Tracking and contributing to an Subversion managed-project:

# Initialize a tree (like git init-db):
        git-svn init http://svn.foo.org/project/trunk
# Fetch remote revisions:
        git-svn fetch
# Create your own branch to hack on:
        git checkout -b my-branch remotes/git-svn
# Commit only the git commits you want to SVN:
        git-svn commit <tree-ish> [<tree-ish_2> ...]
# Commit all the git commits from my-branch that don't exist in SVN:
        git-svn commit remotes/git-svn..my-branch
# Something is committed to SVN, pull the latest into your branch:
        git-svn fetch && git pull . remotes/git-svn
# Append svn:ignore settings to the default git exclude file:
        git-svn show-ignore >> .git/info/exclude

DESIGN PHILOSOPHY
Merge tracking in Subversion is lacking and doing branched development with Subversion is cumbersome as a result. git-svn completely forgoes any automated merge/branch tracking on the Subversion side and leaves it entirely up to the user on the git side. It's simply not worth it to do a useful translation when the original signal is weak.

TRACKING MULTIPLE REPOSITORIES OR BRANCHES
This is for advanced users, most users should ignore this section.

Because git-svn does not care about relationships between different branches or directories in a Subversion repository, git-svn has a simple hack to allow it to track an arbitrary number of related _or_ unrelated SVN repositories via one git repository. Simply set the GIT_SVN_ID environment variable to a name other other than "git-svn" (the default) and git-svn will ignore the contents of the $GIT_DIR/git-svn directory and instead do all of its work in $GIT_DIR/$GIT_SVN_ID for that invocation. The interface branch will be remotes/$GIT_SVN_ID, instead of remotes/git-svn. Any remotes/$GIT_SVN_ID branch should never be modified by the user outside of git-svn commands.

ADDITIONAL FETCH ARGUMENTS
This is for advanced users, most users should ignore this section.

Unfetched SVN revisions may be imported as children of existing commits by specifying additional arguments to fetch. Additional parents may optionally be specified in the form of sha1 hex sums at the command-line. Unfetched SVN revisions may also be tied to particular git commits with the following syntax:

svn_revision_number=git_commit_sha1

This allows you to tie unfetched SVN revision 375 to your current HEAD
    git-svn fetch 375=$(git-rev-parse HEAD)

  Advanced Example: Tracking a Reorganized Repository
If you're tracking a directory that has moved, or otherwise been branched or tagged off of another directory in the repository and you care about the full history of the project, then you can read this section.

This is how Yann Dirson tracked the trunk of the ufoai directory when the /trunk directory of his repository was moved to /ufoai/trunk and he needed to continue tracking /ufoai/trunk where /trunk left off.

        # This log message shows when the repository was reorganized:
        r166 | ydirson | 2006-03-02 01:36:55 +0100 (Thu, 02 Mar 2006) | 1 line
        Changed paths:
           D /trunk
           A /ufoai/trunk (from /trunk:165)
        # First we start tracking the old revisions:
        GIT_SVN_ID=git-oldsvn git-svn init \
                        https://svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/ufoai/trunk
        GIT_SVN_ID=git-oldsvn git-svn fetch -r1:165
        # And now, we continue tracking the new revisions:
        GIT_SVN_ID=git-newsvn git-svn init \
              https://svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/ufoai/ufoai/trunk
        GIT_SVN_ID=git-newsvn git-svn fetch \
              166=`git-rev-parse refs/remotes/git-oldsvn`

BUGS
If somebody commits a conflicting changeset to SVN at a bad moment (right before you commit) causing a conflict and your commit to fail, your svn working tree ($GIT_DIR/git-svn/tree) may be dirtied. The easiest thing to do is probably just to rm -rf $GIT_DIR/git-svn/tree and run rebuild.

We ignore all SVN properties except svn:executable. Too difficult to map them since we rely heavily on git write-tree being _exactly_ the same on both the SVN and git working trees and I prefer not to clutter working trees with metadata files.

svn:keywords can't be ignored in Subversion (at least I don't know of a way to ignore them).

Renamed and copied directories are not detected by git and hence not tracked when committing to SVN. I do not plan on adding support for this as it's quite difficult and time-consuming to get working for all the possible corner cases (git doesn't do it, either). Renamed and copied files are fully supported if they're similar enough for git to detect them.

AUTHOR
Written by Eric Wong <normalperson@yhbt.net>.

DOCUMENTATION
Written by Eric Wong <normalperson@yhbt.net>.