From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Tue, 22 Sep 2015 15:59:29 GMT
Subject: Re: git-svn: Why not use git-fast-import?
Message-ID: <20150922155928.GA16221@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <6AE1604EE3EC5F4296C096518C6B77EE5D0FDAB9D7@mail.accesssoftek.com>

On Tue, Sep 22, 2015 at 02:12:59AM -0700, Victor Leschuk wrote:

> I've been playing with git-svn for some time already and as it seems
> to me there are two most important problems which make it hard to use
> in production for large repositories. Very low speed and large memory
> footprint of synchronization with SVN repos (I am talking about clone
> and fetch operations mostly). I was wondering why the git-fast-import
> is not used for these purposes? Are there any serious limitations
> which make it impossible?

The main reason is that git-svn predates the invention of fast-import.
There was an attempt later to make a more "modern" svn interface:

  - it would provide a git-remote-helper interface (so you could use
    normal clone, fetch, and push with an "svn::" URL rather than a
    separate git-svn).

  - it would use fast-import for moving data into git

but it was never finished. I don't recall the specific problems offhand.
You can see the remnants in the vcs-svn directory of git, or you might
find discussions by searching the list archive.

-Peff