Git-svn clone checkouts wrong repo

Create a users file (i.e. users.txt) for mapping SVN users to Git:

user1 = First Last Name <email@address.com>
user2 = First Last Name <email@address.com>
...

You can use this one-liner to build a template from your existing SVN repository:

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

SVN will stop if it finds a missing SVN user, not in the file. But after that, you can update the file and pick up where you left off.

Now pull the SVN data from the repository:

git svn clone --stdlayout --no-metadata --authors-file=users.txt svn://hostname/path dest_dir-tmp

This command will create a new Git repository in dest_dir-tmp and start pulling the SVN repository. Note that the "--stdlayout" flag implies you have the common "trunk/, branches/, tags/" SVN layout. If your layout differs, become familiar with --tags, --branches, --trunk options (in general git svn help).

All common protocols are allowed: svn://, http://, https://. The URL should target the base repository, something like http://svn.mycompany.com/myrepo/repository. The URL string must not include /trunk, /tag or /branches.

Note that after executing this command it very often looks like the operation is "hanging/frozen", and it's quite normal that it can be stuck for a long time after initializing the new repository. Eventually, you will then see log messages which indicate that it's migrating.

Also note that if you omit the --no-metadata flag, Git will append information about the corresponding SVN revision to the commit message (i.e. git-svn-id: svn://svn.mycompany.com/myrepo/<branchname/trunk>@<RevisionNumber> <Repository UUID>)

If a user name is not found, update your users.txt file then:

cd dest_dir-tmp
git svn fetch

You might have to repeat that last command several times, if you have a large project until all of the Subversion commits have been fetched:

git svn fetch

When completed, Git will checkout the SVN trunk into a new branch. Any other branches are set up as remotes. You can view the other SVN branches with:

git branch -r

If you want to keep other remote branches in your repository, you want to create a local branch for each one manually. (Skip trunk/master.) If you don't do this, the branches won't get cloned in the final step.

git checkout -b local_branch remote_branch
# It's OK if local_branch and remote_branch are the same names

Tags are imported as branches. You have to create a local branch, make a tag and delete the branch to have them as tags in Git. To do it with tag "v1":

git checkout -b tag_v1 remotes/tags/v1
git checkout master
git tag v1 tag_v1
git branch -D tag_v1

Clone your GIT-SVN repository into a clean Git repository:

git clone dest_dir-tmp dest_dir
rm -rf dest_dir-tmp
cd dest_dir

The local branches that you created earlier from remote branches will only have been copied as remote branches into the newly cloned repository. (Skip trunk/master.) For each branch you want to keep:

git checkout -b local_branch origin/remote_branch

Finally, remove the remote from your clean Git repository that points to the now-deleted temporary repository:

git remote rm origin

Assuming that you do not have another remote that was added with git remote add ..., try this procedure:

1. git gc to package all refs into .git/packed-refs.
2. Open .git/packed-refs for editing. Replace "refs/remotes/" with "refs/remotes/svn/".

3. Open .git/config for editing. You should see something like:

   [svn-remote "svn"]
       url = SVN_REPO_URL
       fetch = trunk:refs/remotes/trunk
       branches = branches/*:refs/remotes/*
       tags = tags/*:refs/remotes/tags/*
   

   Replace "refs/remotes/" with "refs/remotes/svn/":

   [svn-remote "svn"]
       url = SVN_REPO_URL
       fetch = trunk:refs/remotes/svn/trunk
       branches = branches/*:refs/remotes/svn/*
       tags = tags/*:refs/remotes/svn/tags/*
   

   Be sure to also update any remote-tracking branches. To do this, you can just replace "refs/remotes/" with "refs/remotes/svn/" in the entire file.

I tested this procedure with a copy of my git-svn mirror of the GNU Nano repository and it seems to work.

EDIT: I have just verified that this procedure does not mess up the git-svn dcommit or rebase operations. It is as if --prefix=svn/ were originally specified in the git svn clone -s SVN_REPO_URL command.