How to migrate/convert from SVN to Mercurial (hg) on windows

Question

I just had to tackle this problem myself. I have a windows XP machine with a separate windows server hosting VisualSVN Server.

I also have TortoiseHG installed as well as the CollabNet Subversion Command-Line Client.

<Enable Convert Extension w/ Tortoise Hg 2>

Many thanks to bgever for pointing out in the comments that with TortoiseHg 2.0, enabling the convert extension is easier than ever. As he says

With TortoiseHG 2.0 this has been made much simpler: Start the TortoiseHG Workbench from the Start menu. Select File --> Settings. Select Extensions from the list. Check the 'convert' checkbox and click OK. That's it! No need to try to generate the config file anymore and search it in the file system. – bgever Mar 11 at 7:56

</Enable Convert Extension w/ Tortoise Hg 2>

<Enable Convert Extension Manually>

To convert a repository from SVN to HG, I followed these steps:

1) Open C:\Program Files\TortoiseHg\Mercurial.ini

EDIT

FYI - Tortoise Hg has migrated this file to

• XP or older - C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Mercurial.ini
• Vista or later - C:\Users\USERNAME\Mercurial.ini

That file will be mostly empty and you'll just list what you'd like to override there. If that's what you have, simple add these two lines to the very end of the file:

[extensions]
convert =

2) Search for the line that begins with

[extensions]

3) Below it you'll see a list of keywords, commented out with a semicolon (;) on each line

4) Find the line that says

;convert =

and delete the semicolon so it reads

convert =

</Enable Convert Extension Manually>

5) Open the command prompt and navigate to the directory that you'd like the new hg folder created in (the process will create a new folder called yoursvnreponame-hg in the directory that the command prompt is open to).

6) Use this command

hg convert file:///y:/yoursvnreponame

I found that the convert tool can have problems with networked repositories, so I had to map a drive to it, but this worked just fine for me.

1. startup svn server on localhost
2. hg convert svn://localhost/your_repo
3. done, because svn bindings needed only for file:// protocol

Mercurial has a built-in conversion extension for this.

To convert an SVN Repo to an HG Repo AND copy it to a different server, you will need a few things.

1. TortoiseHG installed. (Check to see what version is currently being used)
2. Python Installed. (Check to see what version is currently being used)
3. The Python Modules (you can find them http://pysvn.tigris.org/project_downloads.html)
4. You will need to add the convert extension to Tortoise. Start the TortoiseHG Workbench from the Start menu. Select File -> Settings. Select Extensions from the list. Check the convert checkbox and click OK.

First the conversion…

1. It is best to map the Folder that the current SVN Repo is in to the computer you are working on. (i.e. \\server\folder Do not map the SVN Repo folder itself. Map the folder just above it) Give the mapped drive a letter, like Y:\
2. Open a command Prompt and type: CD /D Y:\
3. At the Y:\ prompt type: hg convert y:/RepoName (use the name of the current Repo) Be careful of the forward and back slashes. The one in the command is a forward slash. Also, if the name has spaces, put the name in quotations. (i.e. Y:/"My Repo folder")
4. Now it should be running and will create another folder alongside the old one. And an hg folder should be inside. IT WILL NOT BE INITIATED, AND DO NOT INITIATE!
5. The conversion is complete.

Second the cloning…

1. Open TortoiseHG Workbench. Go to File -> Clone Repository
2. Source: Enter the full path of the converted repo.
3. Destination: Enter the full path of where you want the repo cloned. It is not necessary to create a folder at the new destination as the cloning process will create it and initialize it.
4. Add the permissions to the new cloned folder.
5. You’re done!!!