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Steps to migrate from SVN to GitLab

Steps to migrate from SVN to GitLab

This process worked for me. I take no responsibility for any damage or loss incurred as a result of following or not following these steps or, for that matter, anything else you might do or not do.

Setup

  • SVN is hosted at svn.domain.com.au.
  • SVN is accessible via http (other protocols should work).
  • GitLab is hosted at git.domain.com.au and:
    • A group is created with the namespace dev-team.
    • At least one user account is created, added to the group, and has an SSH key for the account being used for the migration (test using ssh git@git.domain.com.au).
    • The project favourite-project is created in the dev-team namespace.
  • The file users.txt contains the relevant user details, one user per line, of the form username = First Last <address@domain.com.au>, where username is the username given in SVN logs. (See first link in References section for details, in particular answer by user Casey).

Versions

  • subversion version 1.6.17 (r1128011)
  • git version 1.9.1
  • GitLab version 7.2.1 ff1633f
  • Ubuntu server 14.04

Commands

git svn clone --stdlayout --no-metadata -A users.txt http://svn.domain.com.au/svn/repository/favourite-project
cd favourite-project
git remote add gitlab git@git.domain.com.au:dev-team/favourite-project.git
git push --set-upstream gitlab master

That's it! Reload the project page in GitLab web UI and you will see all commits and files now listed.

Notes

  • If there are unknown users, the git svn clone command will stop, in which case, update users.txt, cd favourite-project and git svn fetch will continue from where it stopped.
  • The standard trunk-tags-branches layout for SVN repository is required.
  • The SVN URL given to the git svn clone command stops at the level immediately above trunk/, tags/ and branches/.
  • The git svn clone command produces a lot of output, including some warnings at the top; I ignored the warnings.

References

@vs
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vs commented Dec 1, 2016

It is also possible to create GitLab mirror of existing SVN project via SubGit, see instructions.

@ynotna87
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I am a noobie on this.

I get 'Can't create session' error when i want to access the svn that using https. What should i do ?

Thanks in advance.

@swanandmehta
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maybe I am too late here but I created script maybe it would help anyone in need

#!/usr/bin/env sh

echo Please provide svn project repo :
read svnRepo

echo Please provide git project repo :
read gitRepo

echo Please provide svn project name :
read projectName

root="${projectName}_root"
svnDir="${projectName}_svn"
gitDir="${projectName}_git"

mkdir -p $root
cd $root

mkdir -p $svnDir
cd $svnDir

svn checkout $svnRepo

cd $projectName

svn log -q | awk -F '|' '/^r/ {sub("^ ", "", $2); sub(" $", "", $2); print $2" = "$2" <"$2">"}' | sort -u > ../../users.txt

cd ../../

read -p "Press [Enter] key to confirm the users.txt file is updated with valid accounts which are present in git."

mkdir -p $gitDir
cd $gitDir

git svn clone --stdlayout --no-metadata -A ../users.txt $svnRepo

cd $projectName

for t in $(git for-each-ref --format='%(refname:short)' refs/remotes/tags); do git tag ${t/tags//} $t && git branch -D -r $t; done

for b in $(git for-each-ref --format='%(refname:short)' refs/remotes); do git branch $b refs/remotes/$b && git branch -D -r $b; done

git remote add origin $gitRepo

read -p "Press [Enter] key to confirm force push branches, tags into git."

git push -f --all

read -p "Press [Enter] key to quit the program."

@Hackbard
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@swanandmehta you are just in time ;)

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