cvsimport: trying to convert freebsd cvs to git

hi,

recently Stefan reported that he tried to convert the freebsd cvs' src module to git and he failed. i tried to help him, but i failed, too. here are my efforts:

he made the cvs available on a (relatively) fast rsync mirror at:

rsync://ftp.spline.de/FreeBSD-CVS

(so you don't have to use cvsup if it's a problem for you)

so after mirroring it, i had:

$ ls cvs CVSROOT/ CVSROOT-ports/ CVSROOT-src/ ports/ src/

then i tried:

$ time git cvsimport -d `pwd`/cvs -C src.git src Initialized empty Git repository in /home/vmiklos/git/freebsd/src.git/.git/ malformed revision fatal: refs/heads/origin: not a valid SHA1 fatal: master: not a valid SHA1 warning: You appear to be on a branch yet to be born. warning: Forcing checkout of HEAD. fatal: just how do you expect me to merge 0 trees? checkout failed: 256

real 15m11.529s user 0m46.212s sys 0m6.680s

my questions:

1) does cvsimport supports the case when the source if on the local
filesystem, and not in not on a cvs server?

first i wanted to make sure that cvsimport itself works properly here:

$ git cvsimport -d :pserver:anonymous@tcpflow.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/tcpflow -C tcpflow tcpflow

and it converted this small repo fine

2) if it supports, then i think the real error message is 'malformed
revision'. what is the proper way to see where is that revision?

of course if cvsimport is not the right tool to incrementally convert such a big repo, then i would be interested in other advices, too.

thanks,
- VMiklos