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NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | COMMANDS | OPTIONS | ADVANCED OPTIONS | CONFIG FILE-ONLY OPTIONS | BASIC EXAMPLES | REBASE VS. PULL/MERGE | MERGE TRACKING | HANDLING OF SVN BRANCHES | CAVEATS | CONFIGURATION | FILES | BUGS | SEE ALSO | GIT | NOTES | COLOPHON |
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GIT-SVN(1) Git Manual GIT-SVN(1)
git-svn - Bidirectional operation between a Subversion repository
and Git
git svn <command> [<options>] [<arguments>]
git svn is a simple conduit for changesets between Subversion and
Git. It provides a bidirectional flow of changes between a
Subversion and a Git repository.
git svn can track a standard Subversion repository, following the
common "trunk/branches/tags" layout, with the --stdlayout option.
It can also follow branches and tags in any layout with the
-T/-t/-b options (see options to init below, and also the clone
command).
Once tracking a Subversion repository (with any of the above
methods), the Git repository can be updated from Subversion by the
fetch command and Subversion updated from Git by the dcommit
command.
init
Initializes an empty Git repository with additional metadata
directories for git svn. The Subversion URL may be specified
as a command-line argument, or as full URL arguments to
-T/-t/-b. Optionally, the target directory to operate on can
be specified as a second argument. Normally this command
initializes the current directory.
-T<trunk-subdir>, --trunk=<trunk-subdir>, -t<tags-subdir>,
--tags=<tags-subdir>, -b<branches-subdir>,
--branches=<branches-subdir>, -s, --stdlayout
These are optional command-line options for init. Each of
these flags can point to a relative repository path
(--tags=project/tags) or a full url
(--tags=https://foo.org/project/tags). You can specify
more than one --tags and/or --branches options, in case
your Subversion repository places tags or branches under
multiple paths. The option --stdlayout is a shorthand way
of setting trunk,tags,branches as the relative paths,
which is the Subversion default. If any of the other
options are given as well, they take precedence.
--no-metadata
Set the noMetadata option in the [svn-remote] config. This
option is not recommended, please read the svn.noMetadata
section of this manpage before using this option.
--use-svm-props
Set the useSvmProps option in the [svn-remote] config.
--use-svnsync-props
Set the useSvnsyncProps option in the [svn-remote] config.
--rewrite-root=<URL>
Set the rewriteRoot option in the [svn-remote] config.
--rewrite-uuid=<UUID>
Set the rewriteUUID option in the [svn-remote] config.
--username=<user>
For transports that SVN handles authentication for (http,
https, and plain svn), specify the username. For other
transports (e.g. svn+ssh://), you must include the
username in the URL, e.g.
svn+ssh://foo@svn.bar.com/project
--prefix=<prefix>
This allows one to specify a prefix which is prepended to
the names of remotes if trunk/branches/tags are specified.
The prefix does not automatically include a trailing
slash, so be sure you include one in the argument if that
is what you want. If --branches/-b is specified, the
prefix must include a trailing slash. Setting a prefix
(with a trailing slash) is strongly encouraged in any
case, as your SVN-tracking refs will then be located at
"refs/remotes/$prefix/", which is compatible with Git’s
own remote-tracking ref layout (refs/remotes/$remote/).
Setting a prefix is also useful if you wish to track
multiple projects that share a common repository. By
default, the prefix is set to origin/.
Note
Before Git v2.0, the default prefix was "" (no
prefix). This meant that SVN-tracking refs were put at
"refs/remotes/*", which is incompatible with how Git’s
own remote-tracking refs are organized. If you still
want the old default, you can get it by passing
--prefix "" on the command line (--prefix="" may not
work if your Perl’s Getopt::Long is < v2.37).
--ignore-refs=<regex>
When passed to init or clone this regular expression will
be preserved as a config key. See fetch for a description
of --ignore-refs.
--ignore-paths=<regex>
When passed to init or clone this regular expression will
be preserved as a config key. See fetch for a description
of --ignore-paths.
--include-paths=<regex>
When passed to init or clone this regular expression will
be preserved as a config key. See fetch for a description
of --include-paths.
--no-minimize-url
When tracking multiple directories (using --stdlayout,
--branches, or --tags options), git svn will attempt to
connect to the root (or highest allowed level) of the
Subversion repository. This default allows better tracking
of history if entire projects are moved within a
repository, but may cause issues on repositories where
read access restrictions are in place. Passing
--no-minimize-url will allow git svn to accept URLs as-is
without attempting to connect to a higher level directory.
This option is off by default when only one URL/branch is
tracked (it would do little good).
fetch
Fetch unfetched revisions from the Subversion remote we are
tracking. The name of the [svn-remote "..."] section in the
$GIT_DIR/config file may be specified as an optional
command-line argument.
This automatically updates the rev_map if needed (see
$GIT_DIR/svn/**/.rev_map.* in the FILES section below for
details).
--localtime
Store Git commit times in the local time zone instead of
UTC. This makes git log (even without --date=local) show
the same times that svn log would in the local time zone.
This doesn’t interfere with interoperating with the
Subversion repository you cloned from, but if you wish for
your local Git repository to be able to interoperate with
someone else’s local Git repository, either don’t use this
option or you should both use it in the same local time
zone.
--parent
Fetch only from the SVN parent of the current HEAD.
--ignore-refs=<regex>
Ignore refs for branches or tags matching the Perl regular
expression. A "negative look-ahead assertion" like
^refs/remotes/origin/(?!tags/wanted-tag|wanted-branch).*$
can be used to allow only certain refs.
config key: svn-remote.<name>.ignore-refs
If the ignore-refs configuration key is set, and the
command-line option is also given, both regular
expressions will be used.
--ignore-paths=<regex>
This allows one to specify a Perl regular expression that
will cause skipping of all matching paths from checkout
from SVN. The --ignore-paths option should match for every
fetch (including automatic fetches due to clone, dcommit,
rebase, etc) on a given repository.
config key: svn-remote.<name>.ignore-paths
If the ignore-paths configuration key is set, and the
command-line option is also given, both regular
expressions will be used.
Examples:
Skip "doc*" directory for every fetch
--ignore-paths="^doc"
Skip "branches" and "tags" of first level directories
--ignore-paths="^[^/]+/(?:branches|tags)"
--include-paths=<regex>
This allows one to specify a Perl regular expression that
will cause the inclusion of only matching paths from
checkout from SVN. The --include-paths option should match
for every fetch (including automatic fetches due to clone,
dcommit, rebase, etc) on a given repository.
--ignore-paths takes precedence over --include-paths.
config key: svn-remote.<name>.include-paths
--log-window-size=<n>
Fetch <n> log entries per request when scanning Subversion
history. The default is 100. For very large Subversion
repositories, larger values may be needed for clone/fetch
to complete in reasonable time. But overly large values
may lead to higher memory usage and request timeouts.
clone
Runs init and fetch. It will automatically create a directory
based on the basename of the URL passed to it; or if a second
argument is passed; it will create a directory and work within
that. It accepts all arguments that the init and fetch
commands accept; with the exception of --fetch-all and
--parent. After a repository is cloned, the fetch command will
be able to update revisions without affecting the working
tree; and the rebase command will be able to update the
working tree with the latest changes.
--preserve-empty-dirs
Create a placeholder file in the local Git repository for
each empty directory fetched from Subversion. This
includes directories that become empty by removing all
entries in the Subversion repository (but not the
directory itself). The placeholder files are also tracked
and removed when no longer necessary.
--placeholder-filename=<filename>
Set the name of placeholder files created by
--preserve-empty-dirs. Default: ".gitignore"
rebase
This fetches revisions from the SVN parent of the current HEAD
and rebases the current (uncommitted to SVN) work against it.
This works similarly to svn update or git pull except that it
preserves linear history with git rebase instead of git merge
for ease of dcommitting with git svn.
This accepts all options that git svn fetch and git rebase
accept. However, --fetch-all only fetches from the current
[svn-remote], and not all [svn-remote] definitions.
Like git rebase; this requires that the working tree be clean
and have no uncommitted changes.
This automatically updates the rev_map if needed (see
$GIT_DIR/svn/**/.rev_map.* in the FILES section below for
details).
-l, --local
Do not fetch remotely; only run git rebase against the
last fetched commit from the upstream SVN.
dcommit
Commit each diff from the current branch directly to the SVN
repository, and then rebase or reset (depending on whether or
not there is a diff between SVN and head). This will create a
revision in SVN for each commit in Git.
When an optional Git branch name (or a Git commit object name)
is specified as an argument, the subcommand works on the
specified branch, not on the current branch.
Use of dcommit is preferred to set-tree (below).
--no-rebase
After committing, do not rebase or reset.
--commit-url <URL>
Commit to this SVN URL (the full path). This is intended
to allow existing git svn repositories created with one
transport method (e.g. svn:// or http:// for anonymous
read) to be reused if a user is later given access to an
alternate transport method (e.g. svn+ssh:// or https:// )
for commit.
config key: svn-remote.<name>.commiturl
config key: svn.commiturl (overwrites all svn-remote.<name>.commiturl options)
Note that the SVN URL of the commiturl config key includes
the SVN branch. If you rather want to set the commit URL
for an entire SVN repository use svn-remote.<name>.pushurl
instead.
Using this option for any other purpose (don’t ask) is
very strongly discouraged.
--mergeinfo=<mergeinfo>
Add the given merge information during the dcommit (e.g.
--mergeinfo="/branches/foo:1-10"). All svn server versions
can store this information (as a property), and svn
clients starting from version 1.5 can make use of it. To
specify merge information from multiple branches, use a
single space character between the branches
(--mergeinfo="/branches/foo:1-10 /branches/bar:3,5-6,8")
config key: svn.pushmergeinfo
This option will cause git-svn to attempt to automatically
populate the svn:mergeinfo property in the SVN repository
when possible. Currently, this can only be done when
dcommitting non-fast-forward merges where all parents but
the first have already been pushed into SVN.
--interactive
Ask the user to confirm that a patch set should actually
be sent to SVN. For each patch, one may answer "yes"
(accept this patch), "no" (discard this patch), "all"
(accept all patches), or "quit".
git svn dcommit returns immediately if answer is "no" or
"quit", without committing anything to SVN.
branch
Create a branch in the SVN repository.
-m, --message
Allows to specify the commit message.
-t, --tag
Create a tag by using the tags_subdir instead of the
branches_subdir specified during git svn init.
-d<path>, --destination=<path>
If more than one --branches (or --tags) option was given
to the init or clone command, you must provide the
location of the branch (or tag) you wish to create in the
SVN repository. <path> specifies which path to use to
create the branch or tag and should match the pattern on
the left-hand side of one of the configured branches or
tags refspecs. You can see these refspecs with the
commands
git config --get-all svn-remote.<name>.branches
git config --get-all svn-remote.<name>.tags
where <name> is the name of the SVN repository as
specified by the -R option to init (or "svn" by default).
--username
Specify the SVN username to perform the commit as. This
option overrides the username configuration property.
--commit-url
Use the specified URL to connect to the destination
Subversion repository. This is useful in cases where the
source SVN repository is read-only. This option overrides
configuration property commiturl.
git config --get-all svn-remote.<name>.commiturl
--parents
Create parent folders. This parameter is equivalent to the
parameter --parents on svn cp commands and is useful for
non-standard repository layouts.
tag
Create a tag in the SVN repository. This is a shorthand for
branch -t.
log
This should make it easy to look up svn log messages when svn
users refer to -r/--revision numbers.
The following features from ‘svn log’ are supported:
-r <n>[:<n>], --revision=<n>[:<n>]
is supported, non-numeric args are not: HEAD, NEXT, BASE,
PREV, etc ...
-v, --verbose
it’s not completely compatible with the --verbose output
in svn log, but reasonably close.
--limit=<n>
is NOT the same as --max-count, doesn’t count
merged/excluded commits
--incremental
supported
New features:
--show-commit
shows the Git commit sha1, as well
--oneline
our version of --pretty=oneline
Note
SVN itself only stores times in UTC and nothing else. The
regular svn client converts the UTC time to the local time
(or based on the TZ= environment). This command has the
same behaviour.
Any other arguments are passed directly to git log
blame
Show what revision and author last modified each line of a
file. The output of this mode is format-compatible with the
output of ‘svn blame’ by default. Like the SVN blame command,
local uncommitted changes in the working tree are ignored; the
version of the file in the HEAD revision is annotated. Unknown
arguments are passed directly to git blame.
--git-format
Produce output in the same format as git blame, but with
SVN revision numbers instead of Git commit hashes. In this
mode, changes that haven’t been committed to SVN
(including local working-copy edits) are shown as revision
0.
find-rev
When given an SVN revision number of the form rN, returns the
corresponding Git commit hash (this can optionally be followed
by a tree-ish to specify which branch should be searched).
When given a tree-ish, returns the corresponding SVN revision
number.
-B, --before
Don’t require an exact match if given an SVN revision,
instead find the commit corresponding to the state of the
SVN repository (on the current branch) at the specified
revision.
-A, --after
Don’t require an exact match if given an SVN revision; if
there is not an exact match return the closest match
searching forward in the history.
set-tree
You should consider using dcommit instead of this command.
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.
create-ignore
Recursively finds the svn:ignore and svn:global-ignores
properties on directories and creates matching .gitignore
files. The resulting files are staged to be committed, but are
not committed. Use -r/--revision to refer to a specific
revision.
show-ignore
Recursively finds and lists the svn:ignore and
svn:global-ignores properties on directories. The output is
suitable for appending to the $GIT_DIR/info/exclude file.
mkdirs
Attempts to recreate empty directories that core Git cannot
track based on information in
$GIT_DIR/svn/<refname>/unhandled.log files. Empty directories
are automatically recreated when using "git svn clone" and
"git svn rebase", so "mkdirs" is intended for use after
commands like "git checkout" or "git reset". (See the
svn-remote.<name>.automkdirs config file option for more
information.)
commit-diff
Commits the diff of two tree-ish arguments from the
command-line. This command does not rely on being inside a git
svn init-ed repository. This command takes three arguments,
(a) the original tree to diff against, (b) the new tree
result, (c) the URL of the target Subversion repository. The
final argument (URL) may be omitted if you are working from a
git svn-aware repository (that has been init-ed with git svn).
The -r<revision> option is required for this.
The commit message is supplied either directly with the -m or
-F option, or indirectly from the tag or commit when the
second tree-ish denotes such an object, or it is requested by
invoking an editor (see --edit option below).
-m <msg>, --message=<msg>
Use the given msg as the commit message. This option
disables the --edit option.
-F <filename>, --file=<filename>
Take the commit message from the given file. This option
disables the --edit option.
info
Shows information about a file or directory similar to what
‘svn info’ provides. Does not currently support a
-r/--revision argument. Use the --url option to output only
the value of the URL: field.
proplist
Lists the properties stored in the Subversion repository about
a given file or directory. Use -r/--revision to refer to a
specific Subversion revision.
propget
Gets the Subversion property given as the first argument, for
a file. A specific revision can be specified with
-r/--revision.
propset
Sets the Subversion property given as the first argument, to
the value given as the second argument for the file given as
the third argument.
Example:
git svn propset svn:keywords "FreeBSD=%H" devel/py-tipper/Makefile
This will set the property svn:keywords to FreeBSD=%H for the
file devel/py-tipper/Makefile.
show-externals
Shows the Subversion externals. Use -r/--revision to specify a
specific revision.
gc
Compress $GIT_DIR/svn/<refname>/unhandled.log files and remove
$GIT_DIR/svn/<refname>/index files.
reset
Undoes the effects of fetch back to the specified revision.
This allows you to re-fetch an SVN revision. Normally the
contents of an SVN revision should never change and reset
should not be necessary. However, if SVN permissions change,
or if you alter your --ignore-paths option, a fetch may fail
with "not found in commit" (file not previously visible) or
"checksum mismatch" (missed a modification). If the problem
file cannot be ignored forever (with --ignore-paths) the only
way to repair the repo is to use reset.
Only the rev_map and refs/remotes/git-svn are changed (see
$GIT_DIR/svn/**/.rev_map.* in the FILES section below for
details). Follow reset with a fetch and then git reset or git
rebase to move local branches onto the new tree.
-r <n>, --revision=<n>
Specify the most recent revision to keep. All later
revisions are discarded.
-p, --parent
Discard the specified revision as well, keeping the
nearest parent instead.
Example:
Assume you have local changes in "master", but you need to
refetch "r2".
r1---r2---r3 remotes/git-svn
\
A---B master
Fix the ignore-paths or SVN permissions problem that
caused "r2" to be incomplete in the first place. Then:
git svn reset -r2 -p
git svn fetch
r1---r2'--r3' remotes/git-svn
\
r2---r3---A---B master
Then fixup "master" with git rebase. Do NOT use git merge
or your history will not be compatible with a future
dcommit!
git rebase --onto remotes/git-svn A^ master
r1---r2'--r3' remotes/git-svn
\
A'--B' master
--shared[=(false|true|umask|group|all|world|everybody)],
--template=<template-directory>
Only used with the init command. These are passed directly to
git init.
-r <arg>, --revision <arg>
Used with the fetch command.
This allows revision ranges for partial/cauterized history to
be supported. $NUMBER, $NUMBER1:$NUMBER2 (numeric ranges),
$NUMBER:HEAD, and BASE:$NUMBER are all supported.
This can allow you to make partial mirrors when running fetch;
but is generally not recommended because history will be
skipped and lost.
-, --stdin
Only used with the set-tree 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 dcommit, set-tree and commit-diff commands.
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.
config key: svn.rmdir
-e, --edit
Only used with the dcommit, set-tree and commit-diff commands.
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.
config key: svn.edit
-l<num>, --find-copies-harder
Only used with the dcommit, set-tree and commit-diff commands.
They are both passed directly to git diff-tree; see
git-diff-tree(1) for more information.
config key: svn.l
config key: svn.findcopiesharder
-A<filename>, --authors-file=<filename>
Syntax is compatible with the file used by git cvsimport but
an empty email address can be supplied with <>:
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.
config key: svn.authorsfile
--authors-prog=<filename>
If this option is specified, for each SVN committer name that
does not exist in the authors file, the given file is executed
with the committer name as the first argument. The program is
expected to return a single line of the form "Name <email>" or
"Name <>", which will be treated as if included in the authors
file.
Due to historical reasons a relative filename is first
searched relative to the current directory for init and clone
and relative to the root of the working tree for fetch. If
filename is not found, it is searched like any other command
in $PATH.
config key: svn.authorsProg
-q, --quiet
Make git svn less verbose. Specify a second time to make it
even less verbose.
-m, --merge, -s<strategy>, --strategy=<strategy>, -p,
--rebase-merges
These are only used with the dcommit and rebase commands.
Passed directly to git rebase when using dcommit if a git
reset cannot be used (see dcommit).
-n, --dry-run
This can be used with the dcommit, rebase, branch and tag
commands.
For dcommit, print out the series of Git arguments that would
show which diffs would be committed to SVN.
For rebase, display the local branch associated with the
upstream svn repository associated with the current branch and
the URL of svn repository that will be fetched from.
For branch and tag, display the urls that will be used for
copying when creating the branch or tag.
--use-log-author
When retrieving svn commits into Git (as part of fetch,
rebase, or dcommit operations), look for the first From: line
or Signed-off-by trailer in the log message and use that as
the author string.
config key: svn.useLogAuthor
--add-author-from
When committing to svn from Git (as part of set-tree or
dcommit operations), if the existing log message doesn’t
already have a From: or Signed-off-by trailer, append a From:
line based on the Git commit’s author string. If you use this,
then --use-log-author will retrieve a valid author string for
all commits.
config key: svn.addAuthorFrom
-i<GIT_SVN_ID>, --id <GIT_SVN_ID>
This sets GIT_SVN_ID (instead of using the environment). This
allows the user to override the default refname to fetch from
when tracking a single URL. The log and dcommit commands no
longer require this switch as an argument.
-R<remote-name>, --svn-remote <remote-name>
Specify the [svn-remote "<remote-name>"] section to use, this
allows SVN multiple repositories to be tracked. Default: "svn"
--follow-parent
This option is only relevant if we are tracking branches
(using one of the repository layout options --trunk, --tags,
--branches, --stdlayout). For each tracked branch, try to find
out where its revision was copied from, and set a suitable
parent in the first Git commit for the branch. This is
especially helpful when we’re tracking a directory that has
been moved around within the repository. If this feature is
disabled, the branches created by git svn will all be linear
and not share any history, meaning that there will be no
information on where branches were branched off or merged.
However, following long/convoluted histories can take a long
time, so disabling this feature may speed up the cloning
process. This feature is enabled by default, use
--no-follow-parent to disable it.
config key: svn.followparent
svn.noMetadata, svn-remote.<name>.noMetadata
This gets rid of the git-svn-id: lines at the end of every
commit.
This option can only be used for one-shot imports as git svn
will not be able to fetch again without metadata.
Additionally, if you lose your $GIT_DIR/svn/**/.rev_map.*
files, git svn will not be able to rebuild them.
The git svn log command will not work on repositories using
this, either. Using this conflicts with the useSvmProps option
for (hopefully) obvious reasons.
This option is NOT recommended as it makes it difficult to
track down old references to SVN revision numbers in existing
documentation, bug reports, and archives. If you plan to
eventually migrate from SVN to Git and are certain about
dropping SVN history, consider git-filter-repo[1] instead.
filter-repo also allows reformatting of metadata for
ease-of-reading and rewriting authorship info for
non-"svn.authorsFile" users.
svn.useSvmProps, svn-remote.<name>.useSvmProps
This allows git svn to re-map repository URLs and UUIDs from
mirrors created using SVN::Mirror (or svk) for metadata.
If an SVN revision has a property, "svm:headrev", it is likely
that the revision was created by SVN::Mirror (also used by
SVK). The property contains a repository UUID and a revision.
We want to make it look like we are mirroring the original
URL, so introduce a helper function that returns the original
identity URL and UUID, and use it when generating metadata in
commit messages.
svn.useSvnsyncProps, svn-remote.<name>.useSvnsyncprops
Similar to the useSvmProps option; this is for users of the
svnsync(1) command distributed with SVN 1.4.x and later.
svn-remote.<name>.rewriteRoot
This allows users to create repositories from alternate URLs.
For example, an administrator could run git svn on the server
locally (accessing via file://) but wish to distribute the
repository with a public http:// or svn:// URL in the metadata
so users of it will see the public URL.
svn-remote.<name>.rewriteUUID
Similar to the useSvmProps option; this is for users who need
to remap the UUID manually. This may be useful in situations
where the original UUID is not available via either
useSvmProps or useSvnsyncProps.
svn-remote.<name>.pushurl
Similar to Git’s remote.<name>.pushurl, this key is designed
to be used in cases where url points to an SVN repository via
a read-only transport, to provide an alternate read/write
transport. It is assumed that both keys point to the same
repository. Unlike commiturl, pushurl is a base path. If
either commiturl or pushurl could be used, commiturl takes
precedence.
svn.brokenSymlinkWorkaround
This disables potentially expensive checks to workaround
broken symlinks checked into SVN by broken clients. Set this
option to "false" if you track a SVN repository with many
empty blobs that are not symlinks. This option may be changed
while git svn is running and take effect on the next revision
fetched. If unset, git svn assumes this option to be "true".
svn.pathnameencoding
This instructs git svn to recode pathnames to a given
encoding. It can be used by windows users and by those who
work in non-utf8 locales to avoid corrupted file names with
non-ASCII characters. Valid encodings are the ones supported
by Perl’s Encode module.
svn-remote.<name>.automkdirs
Normally, the "git svn clone" and "git svn rebase" commands
attempt to recreate empty directories that are in the
Subversion repository. If this option is set to "false", then
empty directories will only be created if the "git svn mkdirs"
command is run explicitly. If unset, git svn assumes this
option to be "true".
Since the noMetadata, rewriteRoot, rewriteUUID, useSvnsyncProps
and useSvmProps options all affect the metadata generated and used
by git svn; they must be set in the configuration file before any
history is imported and these settings should never be changed
once they are set.
Additionally, only one of these options can be used per svn-remote
section because they affect the git-svn-id: metadata line, except
for rewriteRoot and rewriteUUID which can be used together.
Tracking and contributing to the trunk of a Subversion-managed
project (ignoring tags and branches):
# Clone a repo (like git clone):
git svn clone http://svn.example.com/project/trunk
# Enter the newly cloned directory:
cd trunk
# You should be on master branch, double-check with 'git branch'
git branch
# Do some work and commit locally to Git:
git commit ...
# Something is committed to SVN, rebase your local changes against the
# latest changes in SVN:
git svn rebase
# Now commit your changes (that were committed previously using Git) to SVN,
# as well as automatically updating your working HEAD:
git svn dcommit
# Append svn:ignore and svn:global-ignores settings to the default Git exclude file:
git svn show-ignore >> .git/info/exclude
Tracking and contributing to an entire Subversion-managed project
(complete with a trunk, tags and branches):
# Clone a repo with standard SVN directory layout (like git clone):
git svn clone http://svn.example.com/project --stdlayout --prefix svn/
# Or, if the repo uses a non-standard directory layout:
git svn clone http://svn.example.com/project -T tr -b branch -t tag --prefix svn/
# View all branches and tags you have cloned:
git branch -r
# Create a new branch in SVN
git svn branch waldo
# Reset your master to trunk (or any other branch, replacing 'trunk'
# with the appropriate name):
git reset --hard svn/trunk
# You may only dcommit to one branch/tag/trunk at a time. The usage
# of dcommit/rebase/show-ignore should be the same as above.
The initial git svn clone can be quite time-consuming (especially
for large Subversion repositories). If multiple people (or one
person with multiple machines) want to use git svn to interact
with the same Subversion repository, you can do the initial git
svn clone to a repository on a server and have each person clone
that repository with git clone:
# Do the initial import on a server
ssh server "cd /pub && git svn clone http://svn.example.com/project [options...]"
# Clone locally - make sure the refs/remotes/ space matches the server
mkdir project
cd project
git init
git remote add origin server:/pub/project
git config --replace-all remote.origin.fetch '+refs/remotes/*:refs/remotes/*'
git fetch
# Prevent fetch/pull from remote Git server in the future,
# we only want to use git svn for future updates
git config --remove-section remote.origin
# Create a local branch from one of the branches just fetched
git checkout -b master FETCH_HEAD
# Initialize 'git svn' locally (be sure to use the same URL and
# --stdlayout/-T/-b/-t/--prefix options as were used on server)
git svn init http://svn.example.com/project [options...]
# Pull the latest changes from Subversion
git svn rebase
Prefer to use git svn rebase or git rebase, rather than git pull
or git merge to synchronize unintegrated commits with a git svn
branch. Doing so will keep the history of unintegrated commits
linear with respect to the upstream SVN repository and allow the
use of the preferred git svn dcommit subcommand to push
unintegrated commits back into SVN.
Originally, git svn recommended that developers pulled or merged
from the git svn branch. This was because the author favored git
svn set-tree B to commit a single head rather than the git svn
set-tree A..B notation to commit multiple commits. Use of git pull
or git merge with git svn set-tree A..B will cause non-linear
history to be flattened when committing into SVN and this can lead
to merge commits unexpectedly reversing previous commits in SVN.
While git svn can track copy history (including branches and tags)
for repositories adopting a standard layout, it cannot yet
represent merge history that happened inside git back upstream to
SVN users. Therefore it is advised that users keep history as
linear as possible inside Git to ease compatibility with SVN (see
the CAVEATS section below).
If git svn is configured to fetch branches (and --follow-branches
is in effect), it sometimes creates multiple Git branches for one
SVN branch, where the additional branches have names of the form
branchname@nnn (with nnn an SVN revision number). These additional
branches are created if git svn cannot find a parent commit for
the first commit in an SVN branch, to connect the branch to the
history of the other branches.
Normally, the first commit in an SVN branch consists of a copy
operation. git svn will read this commit to get the SVN revision
the branch was created from. It will then try to find the Git
commit that corresponds to this SVN revision, and use that as the
parent of the branch. However, it is possible that there is no
suitable Git commit to serve as parent. This will happen, among
other reasons, if the SVN branch is a copy of a revision that was
not fetched by git svn (e.g. because it is an old revision that
was skipped with --revision), or if in SVN a directory was copied
that is not tracked by git svn (such as a branch that is not
tracked at all, or a subdirectory of a tracked branch). In these
cases, git svn will still create a Git branch, but instead of
using an existing Git commit as the parent of the branch, it will
read the SVN history of the directory the branch was copied from
and create appropriate Git commits. This is indicated by the
message "Initializing parent: <branchname>".
Additionally, it will create a special branch named
<branchname>@<SVN-Revision>, where <SVN-Revision> is the SVN
revision number the branch was copied from. This branch will point
to the newly created parent commit of the branch. If in SVN the
branch was deleted and later recreated from a different version,
there will be multiple such branches with an @.
Note that this may mean that multiple Git commits are created for
a single SVN revision.
An example: in an SVN repository with a standard
trunk/tags/branches layout, a directory trunk/sub is created in
r.100. In r.200, trunk/sub is branched by copying it to branches/.
git svn clone -s will then create a branch sub. It will also
create new Git commits for r.100 through r.199 and use these as
the history of branch sub. Thus there will be two Git commits for
each revision from r.100 to r.199 (one containing trunk/, one
containing trunk/sub/). Finally, it will create a branch sub@200
pointing to the new parent commit of branch sub (i.e. the commit
for r.200 and trunk/sub/).
For the sake of simplicity and interoperating with Subversion, it
is recommended that all git svn users clone, fetch and dcommit
directly from the SVN server, and avoid all git
clone/pull/merge/push operations between Git repositories and
branches. The recommended method of exchanging code between Git
branches and users is git format-patch and git am, or just
'dcommit’ing to the SVN repository.
Running git merge or git pull is NOT recommended on a branch you
plan to dcommit from because Subversion users cannot see any
merges you’ve made. Furthermore, if you merge or pull from a Git
branch that is a mirror of an SVN branch, dcommit may commit to
the wrong branch.
If you do merge, note the following rule: git svn dcommit will
attempt to commit on top of the SVN commit named in
git log --grep=^git-svn-id: --first-parent -1
You must therefore ensure that the most recent commit of the
branch you want to dcommit to is the first parent of the merge.
Chaos will ensue otherwise, especially if the first parent is an
older commit on the same SVN branch.
git clone does not clone branches under the refs/remotes/
hierarchy or any git svn metadata, or config. So repositories
created and managed with using git svn should use rsync for
cloning, if cloning is to be done at all.
Since dcommit uses rebase internally, any Git branches you git
push to before dcommit on will require forcing an overwrite of the
existing ref on the remote repository. This is generally
considered bad practice, see the git-push(1) documentation for
details.
Do not use the --amend option of git-commit(1) on a change you’ve
already dcommitted. It is considered bad practice to --amend
commits you’ve already pushed to a remote repository for other
users, and dcommit with SVN is analogous to that.
When cloning an SVN repository, if none of the options for
describing the repository layout is used (--trunk, --tags,
--branches, --stdlayout), git svn clone will create a Git
repository with completely linear history, where branches and tags
appear as separate directories in the working copy. While this is
the easiest way to get a copy of a complete repository, for
projects with many branches it will lead to a working copy many
times larger than just the trunk. Thus for projects using the
standard directory structure (trunk/branches/tags), it is
recommended to clone with option --stdlayout. If the project uses
a non-standard structure, and/or if branches and tags are not
required, it is easiest to only clone one directory (typically
trunk), without giving any repository layout options. If the full
history with branches and tags is required, the options --trunk /
--branches / --tags must be used.
When using multiple --branches or --tags, git svn does not
automatically handle name collisions (for example, if two branches
from different paths have the same name, or if a branch and a tag
have the same name). In these cases, use init to set up your Git
repository then, before your first fetch, edit the $GIT_DIR/config
file so that the branches and tags are associated with different
name spaces. For example:
branches = stable/*:refs/remotes/svn/stable/*
branches = debug/*:refs/remotes/svn/debug/*
git svn stores [svn-remote] configuration information in the
repository $GIT_DIR/config file. It is similar the core Git
[remote] sections except fetch keys do not accept glob arguments;
but they are instead handled by the branches and tags keys. Since
some SVN repositories are oddly configured with multiple projects
glob expansions such those listed below are allowed:
[svn-remote "project-a"]
url = http://server.org/svn
fetch = trunk/project-a:refs/remotes/project-a/trunk
branches = branches/*/project-a:refs/remotes/project-a/branches/*
branches = branches/release_*:refs/remotes/project-a/branches/release_*
branches = branches/re*se:refs/remotes/project-a/branches/*
tags = tags/*/project-a:refs/remotes/project-a/tags/*
Keep in mind that the * (asterisk) wildcard of the local ref
(right of the :) must be the farthest right path component;
however the remote wildcard may be anywhere as long as it’s an
independent path component (surrounded by / or EOL). This type of
configuration is not automatically created by init and should be
manually entered with a text-editor or using git config.
Also note that only one asterisk is allowed per word. For example:
branches = branches/re*se:refs/remotes/project-a/branches/*
will match branches release, rese, re123se, however
branches = branches/re*s*e:refs/remotes/project-a/branches/*
will produce an error.
It is also possible to fetch a subset of branches or tags by using
a comma-separated list of names within braces. For example:
[svn-remote "huge-project"]
url = http://server.org/svn
fetch = trunk/src:refs/remotes/trunk
branches = branches/{red,green}/src:refs/remotes/project-a/branches/*
tags = tags/{1.0,2.0}/src:refs/remotes/project-a/tags/*
Multiple fetch, branches, and tags keys are supported:
[svn-remote "messy-repo"]
url = http://server.org/svn
fetch = trunk/project-a:refs/remotes/project-a/trunk
fetch = branches/demos/june-project-a-demo:refs/remotes/project-a/demos/june-demo
branches = branches/server/*:refs/remotes/project-a/branches/*
branches = branches/demos/2011/*:refs/remotes/project-a/2011-demos/*
tags = tags/server/*:refs/remotes/project-a/tags/*
Creating a branch in such a configuration requires disambiguating
which location to use using the -d or --destination flag:
$ git svn branch -d branches/server release-2-3-0
Note that git-svn keeps track of the highest revision in which a
branch or tag has appeared. If the subset of branches or tags is
changed after fetching, then $GIT_DIR/svn/.metadata must be
manually edited to remove (or reset) branches-maxRev and/or
tags-maxRev as appropriate.
$GIT_DIR/svn/**/.rev_map.*
Mapping between Subversion revision numbers and Git commit
names. In a repository where the noMetadata option is not set,
this can be rebuilt from the git-svn-id: lines that are at the
end of every commit (see the svn.noMetadata section above for
details).
git svn fetch and git svn rebase automatically update the
rev_map if it is missing or not up to date. git svn reset
automatically rewinds it.
We ignore all SVN properties except svn:executable. Any unhandled
properties are logged to $GIT_DIR/svn/<refname>/unhandled.log
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). Committing renamed and copied files is fully supported if
they’re similar enough for Git to detect them.
In SVN, it is possible (though discouraged) to commit changes to a
tag (because a tag is just a directory copy, thus technically the
same as a branch). When cloning an SVN repository, git svn cannot
know if such a commit to a tag will happen in the future. Thus it
acts conservatively and imports all SVN tags as branches,
prefixing the tag name with tags/.
git-rebase(1)
Part of the git(1) suite
1. git-filter-repo
https://github.com/newren/git-filter-repo
This page is part of the git (Git distributed version control
system) project. Information about the project can be found at
⟨http://git-scm.com/⟩. If you have a bug report for this manual
page, see ⟨http://git-scm.com/community⟩. This page was obtained
from the project's upstream Git repository
⟨https://github.com/git/git.git⟩ on 2025-08-11. (At that time,
the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
repository was 2025-08-07.) If you discover any rendering
problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there is
a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
(which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
man-pages@man7.org
Git 2.51.0.rc1 2025-08-07 GIT-SVN(1)
Pages that refer to this page: git(1)
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