SYNOPSIS

cvs2git [OPTION]... OUTPUT-OPTIONS CVS-REPOS-PATH
cvs2git [OPTION]... --options=PATH

DESCRIPTION

Create a new git repository based on the version history stored in a CVS repository. Each CVS commit will be mirrored in the git repository, including such information as date of commit and id of the committer.

The output of this program are a "blobfile" and a "dumpfile", which together can be loaded into a git repository using "git fast-import".

CVS-REPOS-PATH is the filesystem path of the part of the CVS repository that you want to convert. This path doesn't have to be the top level directory of a CVS repository; it can point at a project within a repository, in which case only that project will be converted. This path or one of its parent directories has to contain a subdirectory called CVSROOT (though the CVSROOT directory can be empty).

It is not possible directly to convert a CVS repository to which you only have remote access, but the FAQ describes tools that may be used to create a local copy of a remote CVS repository.

OPTIONS

CONFIGURATION VIA OPTIONS FILE

--options=path

Read the conversion options from path instead of from the command line. This option allows far more conversion flexibility than can be achieved using the command-line alone. See the documentation for more information. Only the following command-line options are allowed in combination with --options: -h/--help, --help-passes, --version, -v/--verbose, -q/--quiet, -p/--pass/--passes, --dry-run, --profile, --trunk-only, --encoding, and --fallback-encoding. Options are processed in the order specified on the command line.

OUTPUT OPTIONS

--blobfile=path

Write the "blob" data (containing revision contents) to path.

--dumpfile=path

Write the revision data (branches and commits) to path.

--dry-run

Do not create any output; just print what would happen.

CONVERSION OPTIONS

--trunk-only

Convert only trunk commits, not tags nor branches.

--encoding=enc

Use encoding as the encoding for filenames, log messages, and author names in the CVS repos. This option may be specified multiple times, in which case the encodings are tried in order until one succeeds. Default: ascii. See http://docs.python.org/lib/standard-encodings.html for a list of other standard encodings.

--fallback-encoding=enc

If none of the encodings specified with --encoding succeed in decoding an author name or log message, then fall back to using encoding in lossy 'replace' mode. Use of this option may cause information to be lost, but at least it allows the conversion to run to completion. This option only affects the encoding of log messages and author names; there is no fallback encoding for filenames. (By using an --options file, it is possible to specify a fallback encoding for filenames.) Default: disabled.

--retain-conflicting-attic-files

If a file appears both inside an outside of the CVS attic, retain the attic version in an SVN subdirectory called 'Attic'. (Normally this situation is treated as a fatal error.)

SYMBOL HANDLING

--symbol-transform=p:s

Transform RCS/CVS symbol names before entering them into Subversion. pattern is a Python regexp pattern that is matches against the entire symbol name; replacement is a replacement using Python's regexp reference syntax. You may specify any number of these options; they will be applied in the order given on the command line.

--symbol-hints=path

Read symbol conversion hints from path. The format of path is the same as the format output by --write-symbol-info, namely a text file with four whitespace-separated columns: project-id, symbol, conversion, and parent-lod-name. project-id is the numerical ID of the project to which the symbol belongs, counting from 0. project-id can be set to '.' if project-specificity is not needed. symbol-name is the name of the symbol being specified. conversion specifies how the symbol should be converted, and can be one of the values 'branch', 'tag', or 'exclude'. If conversion is '.', then this rule does not affect how the symbol is converted. parent-lod-name is the name of the symbol from which this symbol should sprout, or '.trunk.' if the symbol should sprout from trunk. If parent-lod-name is omitted or '.', then this rule does not affect the preferred parent of this symbol. The file may contain blank lines or comment lines (lines whose first non-whitespace character is '#').

--symbol-default=opt

Specify how to convert ambiguous symbols (those that appear in the CVS archive as both branches and tags). opt must be 'heuristic' (decide how to treat each ambiguous symbol based on whether it was used more often as a branch/tag in CVS), 'strict' (no default; every ambiguous symbol has to be resolved manually using --force-branch, --force-tag, or --exclude), 'branch' (treat every ambiguous symbol as a branch), 'tag' (treat every ambiguous symbol as a tag), or 'exclude' (do not convert ambiguous symbols). The default is 'heuristic'.

--force-branch=regexp

Force symbols whose names match regexp to be branches. regexp must match the whole symbol name.

--force-tag=regexp

Force symbols whose names match regexp to be tags. regexp must match the whole symbol name.

--exclude=regexp

Exclude branches and tags whose names match regexp from the conversion. regexp must match the whole symbol name.

--keep-trivial-imports

Do not exclude branches that were only used for a single import. (By default such branches are excluded because they are usually created by the inappropriate use of cvs import.)

SUBVERSION PROPERTIES

--username=name

Set the default username to name when cvs2svn needs to generate a commit for which CVS does not record the original username. This happens when a branch or tag is created. The default is to use no author at all for such commits.

--auto-props=file

Specify a file in the format of Subversion's config file, whose [auto-props] section can be used to set arbitrary properties on files in the Subversion repository based on their filenames. (The [auto-props] section header must be present; other sections of the config file, including the enable-auto-props setting, are ignored.) Filenames are matched to the filename patterns case-insensitively.

--mime-types=file

Specify an apache-style mime.types file for setting svn:mime-type.

--eol-from-mime-type

For files that don't have the kb expansion mode but have a known mime type, set the eol-style based on the mime type. For such files, set svn:eol-style to "native" if the mime type begins with "text/", and leave it unset (i.e., no EOL translation) otherwise. Files with unknown mime types are not affected by this option. This option has no effect unless the --mime-types option is also specified.

--default-eol=style

Set svn:eol-style to style for files that don't have the CVS 'kb' expansion mode and whose end-of-line translation mode hasn't been determined by one of the other options. style must be 'binary' (default), 'native', 'CRLF', 'LF', or 'CR'.

--keywords-off

By default, cvs2svn sets svn:keywords on CVS files to "author id date" if the mode of the RCS file in question is either kv, kvl or unset. If you use the --keywords-off switch, cvs2svn will not set svn:keywords for any file. While this will not touch the keywords in the contents of your files, Subversion will not expand them.

--keep-cvsignore

Include .cvsignore files in the output. (Normally they are unneeded because cvs2svn sets the corresponding svn:ignore properties.)

--cvs-revnums

Record CVS revision numbers as file properties in the Subversion repository. (Note that unless it is removed explicitly, the last CVS revision number will remain associated with the file even after the file is changed within Subversion.)

EXTRACTION OPTIONS

--use-cvs

Use CVS to extract revision contents. This option is slower than --use-internal-co or --use-rcs.

--use-rcs

Use RCS 'co' to extract revision contents. This option is faster than --use-cvs but fails in some cases.

--use-external-blob-generator

Use an external Python program to extract the file revision contents from the RCS files and output them to the blobfile. This option is much faster than --use-rcs or --use-cvs but leaves keywords unexpanded and requires a separate, seekable blob file to write to in parallel to the main cvs2git script.

PARTIAL CONVERSIONS

--pass=pass

Execute only pass pass of the conversion. pass can be specified by name or by number (see --help-passes).

-p [start]:[end], --passes=[start]:[end]

Execute passes start through end of the conversion (inclusive). start and end can be specified by name or by number (see --help-passes). If start or end is missing, it defaults to the first or last pass, respectively. For this to work the earlier passes must have been completed before on the same CVS repository, and the generated data files must be in the temporary directory (see --tmpdir).

INFORMATION OPTIONS

--version

Print the version number.

-h, --help

Print the usage message and exit with success.

--help-passes

Print the numbers and names of the conversion passes and exit with success.

--man

Output the unix-style manpage for this program to standard output.

-v, --verbose

Print more information while running. This option may be specified twice to output voluminous debugging information.

-q, --quiet

Print less information while running. This option may be specified twice to suppress all non-error output.

--write-symbol-info=path

Write to path symbol statistics and information about how symbols were converted during CollateSymbolsPass.

--skip-cleanup

Prevent the deletion of temporary files.

--profile

Profile with 'cProfile' (into file cvs2svn.cProfile).

FILES

A directory called cvs2svn-tmp (or the directory specified by --tmpdir) is used as scratch space for temporary data files.

AUTHORS

Main authors are:
C. Michael Pilato <[email protected]>
Greg Stein <[email protected]>
Branko Čibej <[email protected]>
Blair Zajac <[email protected]>
Max Bowsher <[email protected]>
Brian Fitzpatrick <[email protected]>
Tobias Ringström <[email protected]>
Karl Fogel <[email protected]>
Erik Hülsmann <[email protected]>
David Summers <[email protected]>
Michael Haggerty <[email protected]>

Manpage was written for the Debian GNU/Linux system by Laszlo 'GCS' Boszormenyi <[email protected]> (but may be used by others).