GIT-CVSIMPORT(1)                                              GIT-CVSIMPORT(1)



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

SYNOPSIS
       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
       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&#8217;s main branch
       which you&#8217;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
       -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&#8217;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&#8217;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 in this format


                      exon=Andreas Ericsson <ae@op5.se>
                      spawn=Simon Pawn <spawn@frog-pond.org>


              git cvsimport will make it appear as those authors had their
              GIT_AUTHOR_NAME and GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL set properly all along.

              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
       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
       Problems related to timestamps:


       o  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.

       o  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.

       o  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:


       o  Branches on which no commits have been made are not imported.

       o  All files from the branching point are added to a branch even if
          never added in CVS.

       o  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:


       o  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 these alternative tools which proved to
       be more stable in practice:


       o  cvs2git (part of cvs2svn), http://cvs2svn.tigris.org

       o  parsecvs, http://cgit.freedesktop.org/~keithp/parsecvs

GIT
       Part of the git(1) suite




                                                              GIT-CVSIMPORT(1)
