Using git-svn

We are also experimenting with git-svn. If all works well, we might change the main repo to git in the future. Please consider this page as work in progress, and a sort of notebook for what has worked for us.

Cloning the Subversion repo into a git repo

First you need to create a new git repository. It will contain all the branches, tags and the trunk of the Subversion repository.

git-svn init --trunk=svn://svn.softwarelivre.sapo.pt/sapo_msg_mac/trunk --branches=svn://svn.softwarelivre.sapo.pt/sapo_msg_mac/branches --tags=svn://svn.softwarelivre.sapo.pt/sapo_msg_mac/tags 

Then, you need to fetch the entire history. This will take a while (last I tried it, about 30 minutes on a 4Mb ADSL).

git-svn fetch

After this steps, you'll have several branches in your git repository. use git-branch to see them all.

Starting to work

You won't work directly on any of the branches created by git-svn. To do some work, you'll use a branch:

git-checkout -b your_branch_name_here remote/trunk

This will create a branch names your_branch_name_here and it will setup your work area inside it. All the commits you do from then on, will be on that branch.

Updating from upstream

TODO: basically write about:

• git-stash upstream_update (this will store any pending commits in a temporary space);
• git-svn rebase (this will fetch and merge all the new revisions from svn; you might need to fix conflits, see git-rebase for more info);
• git-stash apply upstream_update
• git-stash clear upstream_update

Sending patches

TODO

Either git-svn dcommit if you have commit bit in SVN, or send patches by email. See git-???...

Info: comparing svn checkout with git repo

Executive summary: after the git-svn clone, the git repo is larger than the svn checkout. But if you run git-gc, the git repo shrinks a lot.

melo@MrTray:sapo_msg_mac $ du -hs * 
 56M    git-repo
 48M    svn-repo
melo@MrTray:sapo_msg_mac $ cd git-repo/
melo@MrTray:git-repo $ git-gc
Generating pack...
Counting objects: 138
Done counting 4636 objects.
Deltifying 4636 objects...
 100% (4636/4636) done
Writing 4636 objects...
 100% (4636/4636) done
Total 4636 (delta 2418), reused 0 (delta 0)
Pack pack-ae314b2b7beb3604ac25100880d73c92bf6becb8 created.
Removing unused objects 100%...
Done.
melo@MrTray:git-repo $ cd ..
melo@MrTray:sapo_msg_mac $ du -hs *
 33M    git-repo
 48M    svn-repo
melo@MrTray:sapo_msg_mac $ 

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