Silence is Foo Mental notes on Ruby, Git, Rails and whatever geeky thing

OMFG, do I really have to get back to SVN??? Part 1

well, I'm not gonna do a Git vs SVN battle here, there are thousands of sites that say Git is better, easier, faster, so I don't need to repeat that, my point here is:

I have to use SVN after having using Git for several months and I don't want to get back to the SVN approach. what can I do?

well, Git has a beautiful SVN wrapper, here is how to use it:

Init

$ git svn init -s https://svn_repository_url your_dir
Initialized empty Git repository in your_dir
$ cd your_dir
$ git svn fetch
    r1 = 6bdec5c6d7f42f7af9a905ea84ea7db60a364b70 (trunk)
         A    README
    r2 = 7219311784935beded8254aa19d3f2635af4ec7a (trunk)
         M    README
    r3 = 58136685ff4688df3106e7b30205ec862677436c (trunk)

    Found possible branch point: https://svn_repository_url/trunk => https://svn_repository_url/branches/my_new_branch, 6
    Found branch parent: (my_new_branch) 58136685ff4688df3106e7b30205ec862677436c
    Following parent with do_switch
    Successfully followed parent
    r4 = 1221404c1cce31b94851f32f5ab3497f74998f03 (my_new_branch)

    Found possible branch point: https://svn_repository_url/trunk => https://svn_repository_url/branches/another_branch, 6
    Found branch parent: (another_branch) 58136685ff4688df3106e7b30205ec862677436c
    Following parent with do_switch
    Successfully followed parent
    r5 = 611a1b5394afa69c6b669f58c0fc38629c2b4da0 (another_branch)

the -s option means that this repository has a standard layout, which means that it has at least 3 folders:

trunk #the main development folder
branches #a container folder for branches
tags #a container folder for tags

Clone (init and fetch in one step)

$ git svn clone -s https://svn_repository_url

At this moment you have one local branch: master

and 3 remote branches: trunk (for git, now this is a branch, not a simple folder), my_new_branch and another_branch

the git master branch is tracking the svn trunk branch, but we don't have local branches tracking any of the other 2 branches yet.

To keep update your working copy just perform:

$ git svn rebase //svn update

In order to keep updated your working copy must be clean, so if you have some changes you won't be able to commit, in such case use:

$ git stash
    Saved working directory and index state WIP on master: 214231d a commit message
    HEAD is now at 214231d a commit message
$ git svn rebase //let's suppose that we got conflicts
    M    README
    Auto-merging README
    CONFLICT (content): Merge conflict in README
    Failed to merge in the changes.
$ git mergetool //solve conflicts
$ git rebase --continue
    Applying: a commit message
$ git stash pop //you will recover your changes, but let's suppose again that we got conflicts too
    Auto-merging README
    CONFLICT (content): Merge conflict in README
$ git mergetool //solve conflicts
$ git commit -m "your commit message" //always, after solving a conflict we have to commit
   [master 11a2588] your commit message
      1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-)

I have to say that this is one of the worst scenarios while updating from an svn server, don't be scared about conflicts it's not that hard to solve them.

here is another example but  now without conflicts

$ git stash
    Saved working directory and index state WIP on master: 6a4131d another message
    HEAD is now at 6a4131d another message
$ git svn rebase
$ git stash pop
$ git commit -m "your commit message"
   [master 12c2a88] your commit message
      1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-)

now, finally, to commit changes to the svn server

$ git svn dcommit //svn commit
   Committing to https://svn_repository_url ...
         M    README
   Committed r6
         M    README
   r6 = 418ad2c0003c0d642a60ce889fd8931d174009a8 (git-svn)
   No changes between current HEAD and refs/remotes/git-svn
   Resetting to the latest refs/remotes/git-svn
   trunk/README: locally modified
         M    README
   Committed r7
         M    README
   r7 = 731f821a38cc401737756470bed2a546e3e6554a (git-svn)
   No changes between current HEAD and refs/remotes/git-svn
   Resetting to the latest refs/remotes/git-svn

ok, but, what did just happen?

1. I made 2 git commits (to the local git repository)

2. In this way each commit made with git was "transformed" into a svn one.

3. so, we went from revision 5 to revision 7

then, if other developers using SVN want your changes, they would do:

$ svn update
   U    trunk/README
   Updated to revision 7.

ok, but, what about all the git sexiness to work with branches and tags?

we will see it in the next part of this post...see you.

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