git-cvsimport newbie question

Scott Lamb· Jul 11, 2007, 07:20 UTC · lore

I'm trying to automatically maintain a git mirror of a (very) remote CVS repository which is suitable for a few people to clone. I'm creating and updating it now by running this periodically:

    $ mkdir ~/git/racoon2.git; cd ~/git/racoon2.git && git-cvsimport -d
:pserver:anoncvs@anoncvs.racoon2.wide.ad.jp:/anoncvs/racoon2 -r wide -i
racoon2

and cloning/pulling it in the simplest possible way:

    $ git clone racoon2.git myracoon2
    $ cd myracoon2
    $ stg init
    ...work work work...
    $ stg pull

But my clones don't see all the upstream branches:

    $ git remote show origin
    * remote origin
      URL: /home/slamb/git/racoon2.git/.git
      Remote branch(es) merged with 'git pull' while on branch master
        master
      Tracked remote branches
        master

In fact, the only branch I see is the one which isn't even updated, which confused into thinking upstream wasn't changing. (I can't say the manpage didn't warn me, though - "By default initial import will create and populate a "master" branch from the CVS repository's main branch which you're free to work with; after that, you need to git merge incremental imports, or any CVS branches, yourself.")

Okay, it seems like what I actually want is this:

    $ git-cvsimport -d $CVSROOT -o master -i racoon2

which essentially creates a repository that is a mirror of upstream rather than one which pretends to be tracking a nonexistent upstream git repository. Now on the cloned branches "git branch -r" does what I want, as does a simple "git pull".

But from the manpage, it appears I'm reverting to a much older way of doing things. Maybe I should be giving the newer way a shot? Was this "-r" way meant to be used with cloning the mirrored repository? If so, what's the workflow there? maybe I should reset racoon2.git's "master" branch to the beginning of time (to avoid confusion), update head to point to remotes/wide/master (so simple "git clone" and "git pull" commands get CVS HEAD), and then update remote.origin.fetch on each cloned repository to pull in other branches as needed? But even after doing that, "git remote show origin" on a cloned repository still won't give me the list of branches I want. So this seems doesn't seem as good as the old way.

Is there any way to make a repository cloned from a new-style cvsimported one show the list of branches? It looks like I can't have a remote in one repository refer to a remote in another repository - it wants a direct reference. Most things seem to ignore origin's remotes, at least unless I explicitly name one like "git pull origin refs/remotes/wide/master".

Best regards, Scott

-- 
Scott Lamb <http://www.slamb.org/>

Scott Lamb· Jul 11, 2007, 15:45 UTC · re: Scott Lamb · lore

Re: git-cvsimport newbie question

Scott Lamb wrote:

Show 18 quoted lines

> But from the manpage, it appears I'm reverting to a much older way of
> doing things. Maybe I should be giving the newer way a shot? Was this
> "-r" way meant to be used with cloning the mirrored repository? If so,
> what's the workflow there? maybe I should reset racoon2.git's "master"
> branch to the beginning of time (to avoid confusion), update head to
> point to remotes/wide/master (so simple "git clone" and "git pull"
> commands get CVS HEAD), and then update remote.origin.fetch on each
> cloned repository to pull in other branches as needed? But even after
> doing that, "git remote show origin" on a cloned repository still won't
> give me the list of branches I want. So this seems doesn't seem as good
> as the old way.
> 
> Is there any way to make a repository cloned from a new-style
> cvsimported one show the list of branches? It looks like I can't have a
> remote in one repository refer to a remote in another repository - it
> wants a direct reference. Most things seem to ignore origin's remotes,
> at least unless I explicitly name one like "git pull origin
> refs/remotes/wide/master".

Hmm...I just saw in a git-svn howto [1] this text:

    [FIXME] This is all very important information for people setting
    up central tracking servers. This needs expansion, probably its own
    section. Talk about tracking server symlink tricks
    (eg refs/heads/svn -> ../remotes and
    refs/ttags/svn -> ../remotes/tags)

Maybe I want to be doing something similar with git-cvsimport? I'm sure there's *some* reason way to take advantage of the my named remote; I just haven't figured out what it is yet. Could someone please fill in details on this text?

Best regards, Scott

[1] - http://utsl.gen.nz/talks/git-svn/intro.html