Moving Repositories from SVN to GIT

Moving Code Repositories from SVN to GIT

Prerequisites

You need the following tools installed on your machine to successfully convert a subversion repo to a git repo.

• svn
• git-svn
• git-core
• ruby
• rubygems

Check the versions of the tools listed above to see if you have them installed.

svn --version

git --version

git svn --version

ruby --version

gem --version

If you don't have them installed you will need to install them using an appropriate version for your operating system. Check with the tools documentation for instructions on how to do this.

Install svn2git

svn2git is a ruby gem what will take all of your subversion info and package it into a git repo. This includes the ability to pull history as well as branches and tags and other useful svn info you will want to migrate. To install this use the gem tool. You may need to run this as root or sudo if you are on a mac, linux or unix operating system.

gem install svn2git

Create SVN Authors File

The first step in converting your SVN repository is to get a list of all authors that have committed or worked in the repository. This will allow you to query SVN later to gather and collect the history and commit logs that you will want to migrate to GIT along with the source code.

1. cd to the root of your subversion project (ie. "cd ./projects/my-svn-project")
2. Make sure you have write permission in this folder. You can check that by using chmod from a unix based OS.
3. Run the following command to create the authors file and store it in the root of your project folder

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

4. Verify that the authors.txt file was created and the authors look like regular committers for your project. (ie. "cat authors.txt" on unix platforms)

Create GIT repo from SVN info

You're now ready to actually do the conversion from SVN to GIT.

1. cd to a new folder where you want to create your GIT repo.

   cd /path/to/new/git_repo
   

2. Run the svn2git command to create the repository. Remember where you stored your authors.txt file because you need to reference it correctly in this command. Also when you reference your svn repo url do not add trunk. You want to reference the project above the trunk, branches and tags so you can collect the details for everything (trunk, branches, tags)

   svn2git https://url/to/your/svn/repo --no-minimize-url --authors /path/to/authors.txt --verbose
   

Push to GIT

You now have a local GIT repository on your machine. You can either work with it from here if you don't want to share with others or you can push it to a place like Stash, Bitbucket or Github. If you are going to push to an area where you can share the code and work with it on a team you need to do the following to get it pushed properly.

Before pushing the code you need to remove remote svn references from your git project.

1. Open the following .git metadata files:
   • .git/config
   • .git/info/refs
   • .git/packed-refs

   vi .git/config .git/info/refs .git/packed-refs
   

   • Delete the [svn-remote "svn"] and [svn] entries from the .git/config metadata file
   • Delete all svn lines in the .git/info/refs metadata file
   • Delete all svn lines in the .git/packed-refs metadata file
2. Delete the following folders:
   • .git/svn
   • .git/logs/refs/remotes/svn
   • .git/refs/remotes/svn

   rm -r .git/svn .git/refs/remotes/svn .git/logs/refs/remotes/svn
   

3. Set your remote

   git remote add origin url.to.your/git/repo.git
   

4. Push the the master sources and branches to git.
   • By specifying the --all argument you will push master and all branches to the remote git repo. Set the remote git location (usually origin) and run the following command:

   git push origin --all
   

5. Push your tags to to git.
   • By specifying the --tags arguments, you will push all tags to the remote git repository. Set the remote git location (usually origin) and run the following command:

   git push origin --tags
   

You should be done! Check your remote GIT repo and verify that all source, tags, branches and history are there.