Getting complete history of an SVN repo that's been renamed using git-svn

Question

I have an SVN repository which was renamed from "Project" to "Project v1".

I then did a git svn clone to create a git version of the renamed SVN folder.

When I git log the newly created git repository, I only see a single history item. It's the commit message which I gave the SVN repository when I renamed the folder.

Is there a way for the git repository to have all of the SVN history prior to the folder being renamed (or any other possible renames prior to that one)?

Answer 1

The only way I have done this in the past (not knowing it's the best or only way!) was to explicitly git svn fetch the prior history (you may need a second remote for this) and then graft the renamed tree onto the old history with git filter-branch (there's a specific example in the docs for reparenting a tree).

Example

From: svn://server/repo/project To:svn://server/repo/project_v1

Optional first step: If you have no existing git-svn repo for this, go ahead and git svn clone svn://server/repo/project. Most people will probably already have this repo around because they have been working with git-svn all along. If you have no git repo at all yet you can do the initial clone on either side.

In your git-svn repo add a remote for the new name of the project. I don't think there's a command for this, you just add a stanza to your .git/config very similar to the one that's already there:

[svn-remote "svn_v1"]
        url = svn://server/repo/project_v1
        fetch = :refs/remotes/git-svn-v1

That new SVN remote can be selected with the --remote svn_v1 option to any git-svn command. The first thing you'll want to do is git-svn fetch --remote svn_v1 which will populate your git repo with the history of that copy. As the original question notes, this will be a very brief history!

Now we apply the example in the git filter-branch manpage. You will need to know the tip of the old history, which is git show-ref -s remotes/git-svn (again, assuming your original clone was the old version). Then use git filter-branch --parent-filter 'sed "s/^\$/-p <graft-id>/"' remotes/git-svn-v1 where <graft-id> is the SHA you just got for the tip of the old history.

Verify that this worked with git log remotes/git-svn-v1 and see all the history.

At this point you can go to your working branch and git reset --hard remotes/git-svn-v1 to switch that branch over to the new history.

Note that the svn-remote named "svn" will be your default, so at the end you will want to rename the remotes in the [svn-remote "..."] lines in your .git/config so that your primary one is named "svn". You can name the other one -old or even remote it.

Caveat: This is from memory and I have not just repeated these steps myself. Comments and corrections welcome.