Fix svn-git install

svn-git-fix.md

git-svn installation fix

Quick guide (and personal memo) on how to get git-svn to run on macOS with brew.

Issue

git-svn is written in perl and running on the perl5 binary bundled with git.
The issue is: the Perl module "SVN::Core" cannot be found. (Obviously, it hasn't be installed).

The error message looks like this:

Can't locate SVN/Core.pm in @INC

The solution is straightforward: provide the installation path of SVN::Core to git-svn.

Solution steps

1. make sure you are using homebrew git. if not: brew install git
2. make sure you have homebrew svn. if not: brew install subversion
   subversion has it's Perl bindings bundled, so we just need to inform git-svn about them.
3. find the path to subversion's Perl bindings. it should be around /usr/local/Cellar/subversion/1.14.1/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.18.4/darwin-thread-multi-2level/ (YMMV on the svn version)
4. open /usr/local/Cellar/git/2.30.2/libexec/git-core/git-svn (YMMV on the git version) in a text editor.
   the first line below the shebang, beginning with use lib is the one we need to change:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use lib (split(/:/, $ENV{GITPERLLIB} || '/usr/local/Cellar/git/2.30.2/share/perl5:/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Library/Perl/5.18/darwin-thread-multi-2level:/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/Library/Perl/5.18/darwin-thread-multi-2level'));

5. insert the path to the svn Perl module after the first path here:
   i.e. after /usr/local/Cellar/git/2.30.2/share/perl5,
   insert /usr/local/Cellar/subversion/1.14.1/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.18.4/darwin-thread-multi-2level/ (separate paths using colons :).
   the code should now read:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use lib (split(/:/, $ENV{GITPERLLIB} || '/usr/local/Cellar/git/2.30.2/share/perl5:/usr/local/Cellar/subversion/1.14.1/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.18.4/darwin-thread-multi-2level/:/usr/local/Cellar/perl/5.32.1_1/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.32.1/darwin-thread-multi-2level/:/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Library/Perl/5.18/darwin-thread-multi-2level:/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/Library/Perl/5.18/darwin-thread-multi-2level'));

6. git svn help and all others commands should work now.

thanks a lot, this really helped!! Can't believe it is this easy!

oh, that's nice to hear. You're welcome!