Unable to browse repository after setting visual SVN Server

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

I needed this as well, and with the help of Bombe's answer + some fiddling around, I got it working. Here's the recipe:

Import Git -> Subversion

1. cd /path/to/git/localrepo
2. svn mkdir --parents protocol:///path/to/repo/PROJECT/trunk -m "Importing git repo"
3. git svn init protocol:///path/to/repo/PROJECT -s
4. git svn fetch
5. git rebase origin/trunk
5.1.  git status
5.2.  git add (conflicted-files)
5.3.  git rebase --continue
5.4.  (repeat 5.1.)
6. git svn dcommit

After #3 you'll get a cryptic message like this:

Using higher level of URL: protocol:///path/to/repo/PROJECT => protocol:///path/to/repo

Just ignore that.

When you run #5, you might get conflicts. Resolve these by adding files with state "unmerged" and resuming rebase. Eventually, you'll be done; then sync back to the SVN repository, using dcommit. That's all.

Keeping repositories in sync

You can now synchronise from SVN to Git, using the following commands:

git svn fetch
git rebase trunk

And to synchronise from Git to SVN, use:

git svn dcommit

Final note

You might want to try this out on a local copy, before applying to a live repository. You can make a copy of your Git repository to a temporary place; simply use cp -r, as all data is in the repository itself. You can then set up a file-based testing repository, using:

svnadmin create /home/name/tmp/test-repo

And check a working copy out, using:

svn co file:///home/name/tmp/test-repo svn-working-copy

That'll allow you to play around with things before making any lasting changes.

Addendum: If you mess up git svn init

If you accidentally run git svn init with the wrong URL, and you weren't smart enough to take a backup of your work (don't ask ...), you can't just run the same command again. You can however undo the changes by issuing:

rm -rf .git/svn
edit .git/config

And remove the section [svn-remote "svn"] section.

You can then run git svn init anew.