Create a git repository for the AFD [ http://www.dwd.de/AFD/ ] from a series of downloaded tarballs. Use `wget -N` to download to keep the original file timestamps, which are used as commit timestamps. This script was used to do the initial import of http://github.com/hfs/afd .

afd-git-import.sh

#!/bin/sh
export GIT_AUTHOR_NAME="Firstname Lastname"
export GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL="Firstname.Lastname@example.com"
export GIT_COMMITTER_NAME="Firstname Lastname"
export GIT_COMMITTER_EMAIL="Firstname.Lastname@example.com"

mkdir afd
cd afd
git init
first=true
for srcfile in $(ls -1 ../src-*.tar.bz2 | sort -V) $(ls -1 ../afd-*.tar.bz2 | sort -V); do
	version=$(echo "$srcfile" | perl -pe 's/^.*?-(.*)\.tar\.bz2/\1/')
	rm -rf *
	case $version in
		1.1.*)
			echo "Extracting ../doc-1.1.x.tar.bz2"
			tar xjf ../doc-1.1.x.tar.bz2
			;;
		1.2.*)
			echo "Extracting ../doc-1.2.x.tar.bz2"
			tar xjf ../doc-1.2.x.tar.bz2
			;;
		*)
			# No extra doc archive
			;;
	esac
	echo "Extracting $srcfile"
	tar xjf "$srcfile" --strip=1
	date=$(stat --format %y "$srcfile")
	export GIT_AUTHOR_DATE="$date"
	export GIT_COMMITTER_DATE="$date"
	commitmessage=$(mktemp)
	shortversion=${version%%-*}
	if [ -e Changelog ]; then
		changelog=Changelog
	else
		changelog=CHANGES
	fi
	if [ "$first" ]; then
		first=
		echo "First public release version $version" >> $commitmessage
		echo >> $commitmessage
		iconv --from iso8859-1 --to utf8 $changelog >> $commitmessage
	else
		echo "Version $version" >> $commitmessage
		echo >> $commitmessage
		iconv --from iso8859-1 --to utf8 $changelog \
		| perl -ne "print if /^-*> Version $shortversion/ .. /^-*> Released:/ and not /^\\s*-+/" >> $commitmessage
	fi
	if [ $(wc -l < $commitmessage) -le 2 ]; then
		interactive=-e
	else
		interactive=
	fi
	git add .
	git add -u
	git commit $interactive -F $commitmessage
	git tag "$version"
	rm $commitmessage
done
git gc