README.mkd

   1 svn2svn
   2 =======
   3 Replicate (replay) changesets from one Subversion repository to another.
   4
   5 Features
   6 --------
   7 - Meant for replaying history into an **empty** target location. This could be
   8   an empty target repo or simply a brand-new folder/branch in the target repo.
   9 - Maintains logical history (when possible), e.g. uses "svn copy" for renames.
  10 - Maintains original commit messages.
  11     - Optionally maintain source author info. (Only supported if target SVN
  12       repo doesn't require auth, since this relies upon the `--username`
  13       command-line arg.)
  14     - **Note:** Cannot maintain original commit date, but appends original
  15       commit date for each commit message: "Date: %d".
  16 - Optionally run an external shell script before each replayed commit
  17   to give the ability to dynamically exclude or modify files as part
  18   of the replay.
  19
  20 Overview
  21 --------
  22 This is a utility for replicating the revision history from a source path in
  23 a source SVN repository to a target path in a target SVN repository. In other
  24 words, it "replays the history" of a given source SVN repository/branch/path
  25 into a target SVN repository/branch/path.
  26
  27 This can be useful to create filtered version of a source SVN repository. For
  28 example, say that you have a huge SVN repository with a _lot_ of old branch
  29 history which is taking up a lot of disk-space and not serving a lot of purpose
  30 going forward.  You can this utility to replay/filter just the "/trunk" SVN
  31 history into a new repository, so that things like "svn log" and "svn blame"
  32 will still show the correct (logical) history/ancestry, even though we end-up
  33 generating new commits which will have newer commit-dates and revision #'s.
  34
  35 Usage
  36 -----
  37 See `svn2svn.py --help`
  38
  39 Examples
  40 --------
  41 **Create a copy of only /trunk from source repo, starting at r5000**
  42
  43     $ svnadmin create /svn/target
  44     $ svn mkdir -m 'Add trunk' file:///svn/target/trunk
  45     $ svn2svn -av -r 5000 http://server/source/trunk file:///svn/target/trunk
  46
  47 1. The `target_url` will be checked-out to `./_wc_target`.
  48 2. The first commit to `http://server/source/trunk` at/after r5000 will be
  49    exported & added into `_wc_target`.
  50 3. All revisions affecting `http://server/source/trunk` (starting at r5000)
  51    will be replayed to `_wc_target`. Any add/copy/move/replaces that are
  52    copy-from'd some path outside of /trunk (e.g. files renamed on a
  53    /branch and branch was merged into /trunk) will correctly maintain
  54    logical ancestry where possible.
  55
  56 **Use continue-mode (-c) to pick-up where the last run left-off**
  57
  58     $ svn2svn -avc http://server/source/trunk file:///svn/target/trunk
  59
  60 1. The `target_url` will be checked-out to `./_wc_target`, if not already
  61    checked-out
  62 2. All new revisions affecting `http://server/source/trunk` starting from
  63    the last replayed revision to `file:///svn/target/trunk` (based on the
  64    "`svn2svn:*`" revprops) will be replayed to `_wc_target`, maintaining all
  65    logical ancestry where possible.
  66
  67 Credits
  68 -------
  69 This project borrows a lot of code from the "hgsvn" project.  Many thanks to
  70 the folks who have contributed to the hgsvn project, for writing code that is
  71 easily re-usable:
  72
  73 * [http://pypi.python.org/pypi/hgsvn](http://pypi.python.org/pypi/hgsvn)
  74 * [https://bitbucket.org/andialbrecht/hgsvn/overview](https://bitbucket.org/andialbrecht/hgsvn/overview)
  75
  76 This project was originally inspired by this "svn2svn" project:
  77 [http://code.google.com/p/svn2svn/](http://code.google.com/p/svn2svn/)
  78 That project didn't fully meet my needs, so I forked and ended-up rewriting
  79 the majority of the code.