GIT-SVN(1) Git Manual GIT-SVN(1)

NAME

git-svn - Bidirectional operation between a Subversion repository and
Git

SYNOPSIS

git svn <command> [<options>] [<arguments>]

DESCRIPTION

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.

COMMANDS

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

OPTIONS

--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

ADVANCED OPTIONS

-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

CONFIG FILE-ONLY OPTIONS
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.

BASIC EXAMPLES

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

REBASE VS. PULL/MERGE
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.

MERGE TRACKING

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).

HANDLING OF SVN BRANCHES

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/).

CAVEATS

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/*

CONFIGURATION

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.

FILES

$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.

BUGS

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/.

SEE ALSO

git-rebase(1)

GIT

Part of the git(1) suite

NOTES

1. git-filter-repo
https://github.com/newren/git-filter-repo

Git 2.48.1 2025-01-13 GIT-SVN(1)