Re: using git-svn with --no-metadata

From: Eric Wong <normalperson@yhbt.net>
Date: Aug 21, 2010, 19:07 UTC
Message-ID: <20100821190711.GA19129@dcvr.yhbt.net>
In-Reply-To: <20100821183711.GA14986@dcvr.yhbt.net>

Eric Wong <normalperson@yhbt.net> wrote:

Show 9 quoted lines

> Vadim Zeitlin <vz-git@zeitlins.org> wrote:
> > The documentation (for my 1.7.1 version) did say that:
> >
> > 	If you lose your .git/svn/git-svn/.rev_db file, git svn will not be
> > 	able to rebuild it and you won't be able to fetch again, either.
> >
> > but I understood it as meaning that I wouldn't be able to fetch again if
> > the file was lost (the file name appears to be wrong BTW, since the switch
> > to rev_map from rev_db some time ago)

> I'll update the docs accordingly.

Hopefully the following patch makes sense, let me know what you think, thanks.

>From 4c169c696bee06472ca3511a0f58c1c1b52b9fe9 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001

From: Eric Wong <normalperson@yhbt.net>
Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2010 18:52:14 +0000
Subject: [PATCH] Documentation/git-svn: discourage "noMetadata"

"noMetadata" is a limited and sometimes harmful option. Recommend git-filter-branch instead (if at all) for one-shot imports instead.

This also fixes an out-of-date reference to "rev_db" format, noticed by Vadim Zeitlin.

Signed-off-by: Eric Wong <normalperson@yhbt.net>
---
 Documentation/git-svn.txt |   14 ++++++++++++--
 1 files changed, 12 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

diff --git a/Documentation/git-svn.txt b/Documentation/git-svn.txt
index 4b84d08..8abbcdc 100644
--- a/Documentation/git-svn.txt
+++ b/Documentation/git-svn.txt
@@ -56,6 +56,8 @@ COMMANDS
 	as well, they take precedence.
 --no-metadata;;
 	Set the 'noMetadata' option in the [svn-remote] config.
+	This option is not recommended, please read the 'svn.noMetadata'
+	section of this manpage before using this option.
 --use-svm-props;;
 	Set the 'useSvmProps' option in the [svn-remote] config.
 --use-svnsync-props;;
@@ -597,13 +599,21 @@ svn.noMetadata::
 svn-remote.<name>.noMetadata::
 	This gets rid of the 'git-svn-id:' lines at the end of every commit.
 +
-If you lose your .git/svn/git-svn/.rev_db file, 'git svn' will not
+If you lose your .git/svn/**/.rev_map.* files, 'git svn' will not
 be able to rebuild it and you won't be able to fetch again,
-either.  This is fine for one-shot imports.
+either.  This is sometimes useful for one-shot imports.
 +
 The 'git svn log' command will not work on repositories using
 this, either.  Using this conflicts with the 'useSvmProps'
 option for (hopefully) obvious reasons.
++
+This option is NOT recommended as it makes it difficult to track down
+old references to SVN revision numbers in existing documentation, bug
+reports and archives.  If you plan to eventually migrate from SVN to git
+and are certain about dropping SVN history, consider
+linkgit:git-filter-branch[1] instead.  filter-branch also allows
+reformating of metadata for ease-of-reading and rewriting authorship
+info for non-"svn.authorsFile" users.
 
 svn.useSvmProps::
 svn-remote.<name>.useSvmProps::

-- 
Eric Wong