Converting a local svn repo dump to git

Question

I searched related questions but I couldn't find anything matching my specific situation: I have some old repository archives from an SVN server that was taken down years ago. They're tarballs of the original repository structure on the server. What I want to do is convert them to git repositories as a basis for future work/reviving the projects. I've already read several tutorials about the conversion process, and I think I can figure out the authors conversion, branches mapping, etc., but they all assume you have an SVN server and a url for the repository. Do I need to install and setup and SVN server to do this conversion, or is there some way I can point either git clone or svn2git (or another tool) at the repo dump I have?

Vicinage

Standard edition of VisualSVN Server is free, so there's plan B. – Incorporeal

I think installing the original SVN server would be a good bit easier than that.. – Vicinage

Answer 1

install subversion locally in order to import your dump, then with git-svn package.

You can use git svn clone file:///path/to/svn/repo /path/to/empty/dir

Quilt

I already found this experimenting last night and got it working, but this is the correct answer. Thanks and +1/accepted! And welcome to SO. :-) – Vicinage

Answer 2

Retrieve a list of all Subversion committers:

svn log -q | awk -F '|' '/^r/ {sub("^ ", "", $2); sub(" $", "", $2); print $2" = "$2" <"$2">"}' | sort -u > authors-transform.txt

Clone the Subversion repository using git-svn:

git svn clone [SVN repo URL] --no-metadata -A authors-transform.txt --stdlayout ~/temp

Convert svn:ignore properties to .gitignore:

cd ~/temp
git svn show-ignore > .gitignore
git add .gitignore
git commit -m 'Convert svn:ignore properties to .gitignore.'

Push repository to a bare git repository:

git init --bare ~/new-bare.git
cd ~/new-bare.git
git symbolic-ref HEAD refs/heads/trunk

Then push the temp repository to the new bare repository.

cd ~/temp
git remote add bare ~/new-bare.git
git config remote.bare.push 'refs/remotes/*:refs/heads/*'
git push bare

Rename “trunk” branch to “master”:

cd ~/new-bare.git
git branch -m trunk master

Clean up branches and tags:

cd ~/new-bare.git
git for-each-ref --format='%(refname)' refs/heads/tags |
cut -d / -f 4 |
while read ref
do
  git tag "$ref" "refs/heads/tags/$ref";
  git branch -D "tags/$ref";
done

Reference: http://john.albin.net/git/convert-subversion-to-git

Stricklan

Also see How to git-svn clone the last n revisions from a Subversion repository? which describes how to selectively clone svn to git. – Phenice

Answer 3

1. All (?) svn -> git converters require live Subversion repository,
2. Tree-copy of repository is not a dump, it's usual file-level backup.

You have:

1. Install and configure any Subversion server (if your converter can't handle file:/// protocol for SVN, otherwise it's not needed - just unpack tarball(s) and check repo with svn client)
2. Read about git-svn
3. Use git-svn

Dahna

Answer 4

1. Take the dump file in your severs:

   svnadmin dump "repopath or url" > import.bkp
   
   git svn clone "back" 
   

2. Go to the clone path and then open git bash and run these commands:

   git svn show-ignore > .gitignore
   
   git add .gitignore
   
   git commit -m "with message"
   
   git check in "git url"
   

Dunaway

Can you elaborate what git svn clone "back" does? I'm not understanding how svnadmin dump and this command relate to one another? Are you just taking a backup of the svn repository prior to using git svn clone, in case you screw something up? – Worser

Answer 5

The reposurgeon tool supports direct (and extremely fast) conversion of SVN dump files to Git repositories.

Psychoanalysis