# git-svn: Handling of branches created from subfolders 3 messages from 2017-08-19 to 2017-08-20. Participants: Jan Teske, Andreas Heiduk. Thread: https://gitlist.dev/t/46627 ## Jan Teske, 2017-08-19 12:45 Subject: git-svn: Handling of branches created from subfolders Message-ID: <1ED00C5D-177C-4F95-8261-BFB7345B7C08@gmail.com> URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/1ED00C5D-177C-4F95-8261-BFB7345B7C08%40gmail.com ``` Hello, I’m trying to do a one-time conversion of a large SVN repository to git using git-svn. Unfortunately, this SVN repo contains a substantial amount of non-standard branches created from a subfolder of trunk/. Users that only need to work on part of the code inside the repo usually create such branches to avoid having to download unneeded files. A toy example showing what I’m talking about: trunk/ - subfolder1/ - … - subfolder2/ - … branches/ - branch1/ (initially cp’ed from trunk/subfolder1) - … - branch2/ (initially cp’ed from trunk/subfolder2) - … - branch3/ (initially cp’ed from trunk) - … While in my experience, git-svn is able to correctly handle branches/branch3, it fails on branch1 and branch2. By "fails" I mean that it still performs the conversion, but any relationship to the trunk is completely missing. Instead, in the resulting git repository it looks like those branches have a completely separate history, starting from nothing. Is there any way to fix such branches from subfolders in a way that they integrate correctly with the converted git repository, without losing any (or at least too much) history? If this is not possible with git-svn directly, maybe I could prepare the SVN repo or post-process the converted git repository somehow? Thanks! ``` ## Andreas Heiduk, 2017-08-20 10:27 Subject: Re: git-svn: Handling of branches created from subfolders Message-ID: <8c910a5b-ed96-41d4-d157-f138af51011f@gmail.com> URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/8c910a5b-ed96-41d4-d157-f138af51011f%40gmail.com In-Reply-To: <1ED00C5D-177C-4F95-8261-BFB7345B7C08@gmail.com> ``` Am 19.08.2017 um 14:45 schrieb Jan Teske: > Is there any way to fix such branches from subfolders in a way that they integrate correctly with the converted git repository, without losing any (or at least too much) history? If this is not possible with git-svn directly, maybe I could prepare the SVN repo or post-process the converted git repository somehow? You can use `git replace --graft` to connect the first commit of the loose branches with their source. After all connections are in place you can use `git filter-branch` to make the replacements permanent. This will not change the content or directory structure of branch1 or branch2 but the diff with their parent commits will show up as a huge delete/rename operation. So merging/Cherry-picking between trunk and branch1/branch2 will be ... challenging. ``` ## Jan Teske, 2017-08-20 17:42 Subject: Re: git-svn: Handling of branches created from subfolders Message-ID: <74EA70E5-0B8A-4D34-B5EA-8C97A10F3D0F@gmail.com> URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/74EA70E5-0B8A-4D34-B5EA-8C97A10F3D0F%40gmail.com In-Reply-To: <8c910a5b-ed96-41d4-d157-f138af51011f@gmail.com> ``` > On 20. Aug 2017, at 12:27 , Andreas Heiduk wrote: > > Am 19.08.2017 um 14:45 schrieb Jan Teske: >> Is there any way to fix such branches from subfolders in a way that they integrate correctly with the converted git repository, without losing any (or at least too much) history? If this is not possible with git-svn directly, maybe I could prepare the SVN repo or post-process the converted git repository somehow? > > You can use `git replace --graft` to connect the first commit of the > loose branches with their source. After all connections are in place you > can use `git filter-branch` to make the replacements permanent. > > This will not change the content or directory structure of branch1 or > branch2 but the diff with their parent commits will show up as a huge > delete/rename operation. So merging/Cherry-picking between trunk and > branch1/branch2 will be ... challenging. That’s really helpful, thanks! I even solved the problem of the challenging merging between the converted branches and trunk by using another filter-branch to rewrite all the commits in branch1/branch2 to make all their modifications in the respective subfolders (effectively fixing the directory structure to fit trunk). This answer was helpful for how to do this: https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/280229 So, for future reference, the following post-processing seems to work: 1. Use filter-branch to move all the commits the the correct subfolder. 2. Use `git replace --graft` to connect the first commit of the branch to its correct parent commit. 3. Use `git replace --graft` to add the missing parents of any merge commits the branch was part of. 4. Use filter-branch again to make the replacements permanent. ```