Migrate from svn to git | GitStack

Migrate from svn to git

Mon, Apr 2, 2012

Subversion was the most used versioning system until last year. A majority of new projects are now using git and most of the older but active project are now migrating from subversion to git.

This tutorial will show you how to migrate your subversion server (online hosted or using a software like visualsvn server) to a git server (GitStack).

The migration process has 4 steps :
1. Use git to checkout your svn repository
2. Clean your project from unnecessary files
3. Create a new remote git repository on GitStack
4. Push your repository to GitStack

Prerequisites :
-msysgit installed on a client computer
-GitStack installed on a remote computer

1. Use git to checkout your svn repository

We take as our svn repository example “fotoslide” which is a project randomly chosen on google code http://code.google.com/p/fotoslide/

Launch git bash (provided by msysgit)


Checkout your svn project on your client computer :
$ git svn clone http://fotoslide./svn/ –no-metadata -s fotoslide

Git will download all the repository files and history. It might take a few minutes/hours depending of the size of your svn repository. The ‘–no-metadata’ parameter is used to remove unnecessary svn backward compatibility data (git-svn-id is not imported).

2. Clean your project from unnecessary files

Get into your project directory :
$ cd fotoslide

Convert weird tag branches to real git tags :
$ cp -Rf .git/refs/remotes/tags/* .git/refs/tags/
$ rm -Rf .git/refs/remotes/tags

Convert old svn branches to real git branches :
$ cp -Rf .git/refs/remotes/* .git/refs/heads/
$ rm -Rf .git/refs/remotes

3. Create a new remote git repository on GitStack

Launch GitStack on your server and create one user
Create a repository. We will name it fotoslide.
Add a user with read/write access to the repository.

4. Push your repository to GitStack

Add the git server as a remote server :
$ git remote add origin http://10.0.2.15/fotoslide.git

Push your code to the new server, including all the tags and branches :
$ git push origin –all



You have successfully migrated your repository from svn to git.