NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | OUTPUT | ISSUES | GIT | NOTES | COLOPHON

GIT-CVSIMPORT(1)                 Git Manual                 GIT-CVSIMPORT(1)

NAME         top

       git-cvsimport - Salvage your data out of another SCM people love to
       hate

SYNOPSIS         top

       git cvsimport [-o <branch-for-HEAD>] [-h] [-v] [-d <CVSROOT>]
                     [-A <author-conv-file>] [-p <options-for-cvsps>] [-P <file>]
                     [-C <git_repository>] [-z <fuzz>] [-i] [-k] [-u] [-s <subst>]
                     [-a] [-m] [-M <regex>] [-S <regex>] [-L <commitlimit>]
                     [-r <remote>] [-R] [<CVS_module>]

DESCRIPTION         top

       WARNING: git cvsimport uses cvsps version 2, which is considered
       deprecated; it does not work with cvsps version 3 and later. If you
       are performing a one-shot import of a CVS repository consider using
       cvs2git[1] or cvs-fast-export[2].
       Imports a CVS repository into Git. It will either create a new
       repository, or incrementally import into an existing one.
       Splitting the CVS log into patch sets is done by cvsps. At least
       version 2.1 is required.
       WARNING: for certain situations the import leads to incorrect
       results. Please see the section ISSUES for further reference.
       You should never do any work of your own on the branches that are
       created by git cvsimport. 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. It is advisable
       to specify a named remote via -r to separate and protect the incoming
       branches.
       If you intend to set up a shared public repository that all
       developers can read/write, or if you want to use git-cvsserver(1),
       then you probably want to make a bare clone of the imported
       repository, and use the clone as the shared repository. See
       gitcvs-migration(7).

OPTIONS         top

       -v
           Verbosity: let cvsimport report what it is doing.
       -d <CVSROOT>
           The root of the CVS archive. May be local (a simple path) or
           remote; currently, only the :local:, :ext: and :pserver: access
           methods are supported. If not given, git cvsimport will try to
           read it from CVS/Root. If no such file exists, it checks for the
           CVSROOT environment variable.
       <CVS_module>
           The CVS module you want to import. Relative to <CVSROOT>. If not
           given, git cvsimport tries to read it from CVS/Repository.
       -C <target-dir>
           The Git repository to import to. If the directory doesn’t exist,
           it will be created. Default is the current directory.
       -r <remote>
           The Git remote to import this CVS repository into. Moves all CVS
           branches into remotes/<remote>/<branch> akin to the way git clone
           uses origin by default.
       -o <branch-for-HEAD>
           When no remote is specified (via -r) the HEAD branch from CVS is
           imported to the origin branch within the Git repository, as HEAD
           already has a special meaning for Git. When a remote is specified
           the HEAD branch is named remotes/<remote>/master mirroring git
           clone behaviour. Use this option if you want to import into a
           different branch.
           Use -o master for continuing an import that was initially done by
           the old cvs2git tool.
       -i
           Import-only: don’t perform a checkout after importing. This
           option ensures the working directory and index remain untouched
           and will not create them if they do not exist.
       -k
           Kill keywords: will extract files with -kk from the CVS archive
           to avoid noisy changesets. Highly recommended, but off by default
           to preserve compatibility with early imported trees.
       -u
           Convert underscores in tag and branch names to dots.
       -s <subst>
           Substitute the character "/" in branch names with <subst>
       -p <options-for-cvsps>
           Additional options for cvsps. The options -u and -A are implicit
           and should not be used here.
           If you need to pass multiple options, separate them with a comma.
       -z <fuzz>
           Pass the timestamp fuzz factor to cvsps, in seconds. If unset,
           cvsps defaults to 300s.
       -P <cvsps-output-file>
           Instead of calling cvsps, read the provided cvsps output file.
           Useful for debugging or when cvsps is being handled outside
           cvsimport.
       -m
           Attempt to detect merges based on the commit message. This option
           will enable default regexes that try to capture the source branch
           name from the commit message.
       -M <regex>
           Attempt to detect merges based on the commit message with a
           custom regex. It can be used with -m to enable the default
           regexes as well. You must escape forward slashes.
           The regex must capture the source branch name in $1.
           This option can be used several times to provide several
           detection regexes.
       -S <regex>
           Skip paths matching the regex.
       -a
           Import all commits, including recent ones. cvsimport by default
           skips commits that have a timestamp less than 10 minutes ago.
       -L <limit>
           Limit the number of commits imported. Workaround for cases where
           cvsimport leaks memory.
       -A <author-conv-file>
           CVS by default uses the Unix username when writing its commit
           logs. Using this option and an author-conv-file maps the name
           recorded in CVS to author name, e-mail and optional time zone:
                       exon=Andreas Ericsson <ae@op5.se>
                       spawn=Simon Pawn <spawn@frog-pond.org> America/Chicago
           git cvsimport will make it appear as those authors had their
           GIT_AUTHOR_NAME and GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL set properly all along. If a
           time zone is specified, GIT_AUTHOR_DATE will have the
           corresponding offset applied.
           For convenience, this data is saved to $GIT_DIR/cvs-authors each
           time the -A option is provided and read from that same file each
           time git cvsimport is run.
           It is not recommended to use this feature if you intend to export
           changes back to CVS again later with git cvsexportcommit.
       -R
           Generate a $GIT_DIR/cvs-revisions file containing a mapping from
           CVS revision numbers to newly-created Git commit IDs. The
           generated file will contain one line for each (filename,
           revision) pair imported; each line will look like
               src/widget.c 1.1 1d862f173cdc7325b6fa6d2ae1cfd61fd1b512b7
           The revision data is appended to the file if it already exists,
           for use when doing incremental imports.
           This option may be useful if you have CVS revision numbers stored
           in commit messages, bug-tracking systems, email archives, and the
           like.
       -h
           Print a short usage message and exit.

OUTPUT         top

       If -v is specified, the script reports what it is doing.
       Otherwise, success is indicated the Unix way, i.e. by simply exiting
       with a zero exit status.

ISSUES         top

       Problems related to timestamps:
       ·   If timestamps of commits in the CVS repository are not stable
           enough to be used for ordering commits changes may show up in the
           wrong order.
       ·   If any files were ever "cvs import"ed more than once (e.g.,
           import of more than one vendor release) the HEAD contains the
           wrong content.
       ·   If the timestamp order of different files cross the revision
           order within the commit matching time window the order of commits
           may be wrong.
       Problems related to branches:
       ·   Branches on which no commits have been made are not imported.
       ·   All files from the branching point are added to a branch even if
           never added in CVS.
       ·   This applies to files added to the source branch after a daughter
           branch was created: if previously no commit was made on the
           daughter branch they will erroneously be added to the daughter
           branch in git.
       Problems related to tags:
       ·   Multiple tags on the same revision are not imported.
       If you suspect that any of these issues may apply to the repository
       you want to import, consider using cvs2git:
       ·   cvs2git (part of cvs2svn), http://subversion.apache.org/ 

GIT         top

       Part of the git(1) suite

NOTES         top

        1. cvs2git
           http://cvs2svn.tigris.org/cvs2git.html
        2. cvs-fast-export
           http://www.catb.org/esr/cvs-fast-export/

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the git (Git distributed version control system)
       project.  Information about the project can be found at 
       ⟨http://git-scm.com/⟩.  If you have a bug report for this manual page,
       see ⟨http://git-scm.com/community⟩.  This page was obtained from the
       project's upstream Git repository ⟨https://github.com/git/git.git⟩ on
       2017-07-05.  If you discover any rendering problems in this HTML ver‐
       sion of the page, or you believe there is a better or more up-to-date
       source for the page, or you have corrections or improvements to the
       information in this COLOPHON (which is not part of the original man‐
       ual page), send a mail to man-pages@man7.org
Git 2.10.1.352.g0cf361           10/04/2016                 GIT-CVSIMPORT(1)

Pages that refer to this page: git(1)gitcvs-migration(7)