CODEWITHSUNDEEP
gitsvngit-svn
Allan
Allan

Reputation: 1083

Using git within an svn checkout? (without git-svn)

I did a number of searches, but couldn't find an answer to this question. Apologies if it is a duplicate.

I'd like to know if there are any problems initializing a git repo (for local usage) within an existing svn checkout, but without using git-svn.

Here's my scenario:

I'm thinking that I would always do svn update and commit from the git master branch. As I work on features, I'd merge to and from master.

Has anyone tried this? Are there any nasty drawbacks or side effects? Tips?

Upvotes: 4

Views: 373

Answers (2)

me_and
me_and

Reputation: 15634

TL;DR: Yes you can, but it's harder work than just learning git-svn.

I've tried it. The main problem you have is converting svn up operations to Git commits. There are two approaches I've seen:

  1. Add your .svn folder to .gitignore, so you never have Git tracking your Subversion metadata. This means you have Subversion and Git separately tracking your working copy, so any operation on one requires a similar operation on the other.

    Unless you put a lot of thought into how you're going to use the repository, are very comfortable using Subversion merges, branches and switches, and make sure to use those carefully to match up what you're doing with the repository with Git, you'll lose most of the advantages of Git's branching model.

  2. Track your .svn folder with Git. This means that if, for example, you did an svn up and a git commit, then checked out an old Git commit, the Subversion metadata would match up correctly.

    This means you can more easily use Git's branching features, but there's a host of other problems with having Git track Subversion metadata. The primary one (at least for Subversion 1.6, I don't know about 1.7) is that empty folders in a .svn directory are significant, but Git doesn't track empty folders, so they'll be deleted without warning.

I used method 1 for a little while, but found it gave me all the worst bits of both Git and Subversion, with very little advantage, and meant everything operation needed to be done twice to get anything done.

A colleague of mine used method 2 for some time with more luck, but he wrote a whole bunch of helper scripts to enable him to do so. In particular, his scripts would spin through the working copy and fix up any .svn directories that needed empty folders adding. It was a lot of work to set up, but meant he could at least use most of the features of Git. Sadly, I don't have access to the scripts in question.

Having used git-svn for some time, I can vouch for it being easier than either of these options, even as a Git beginner. I'd recommend keeping a Subversion working copy around for the occasions when you need to do something now and don't have time to check the best way to do it with Git, or for the occasions where git-svn is too limited to do what you need it to do. The learning curve for git-svn is, I'd say, not much more difficult than that for regular Git, particularly as you don't need to learn anything about working with a remote Git repository.

Upvotes: 5

Roman
Roman

Reputation: 20246

I tried this, it can work. You just need to add SVN related files to your .gitignore and Git related files to svn ignore. A similar question was also asked here, just replace StarTeam with SVN.

There's really not much to learn to get going with git-svn. Your workflow will basically be (rest of article):

  1. create local git repo: git svn clone -s http://svnrepo
  2. get latest from svn: git svn fetch then git svn rebase
  3. make local changes: git add and git commit -m “message”
  4. push to svn: git svn dcommit

repeating steps 2-4 as necessary.

Not a whole lot to learn, and one less tool to worry about.

Upvotes: 1

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