Skip to main content

More git-svn Woes

I was pretty happy with myself after I figured out to always use git-svn with the --prefix configuration. However, as +Johan Herland foretold, this stopped working after Git 1.8.3.2. Or to be precise, the convenient branch checkout/tracking mechanism stopped working.

So while you could do this before (imagine a fresh git-svn clone with --prefix=mirror/):

>git branch -a                                        
* master
  remotes/mirror/trunk #this is a svn remote

> git checkout trunk  
Branch trunk set up to track remote branch trunk from mirror.

Now, after upgrading Git past Git 1.8.3.2, you'll get this instead:
> git checkout trunk
error: pathspec 'trunk' did not match any file(s) known to git.

Even if you try doing it more explicitly:

>git checkout -tb trunk mirror/trunk
fatal: Cannot setup tracking information; starting point 'mirror/trunk' is not a branch.

Strangely enough, git branch earlier told us that this is a branch. We can even check out the head of it, albeit in detached mode:

> git checkout mirror/trunk       
Note: checking out 'mirror/trunk'.
You are in 'detached HEAD' state.[...]

So how can we check out this branch then? This is how:

>git checkout -b trunk refs/remotes/mirror/trunk
Switched to a new branch 'trunk'

Now, I think it should be tracking everything already, git-svn-wise, so you can do git svn dcommit and git svn rebase right away. 

If you want the technical reasoning for why this is the case now, I've quoted bits of Johan's post here (hyperlinks added by me), but I do recommend reading the whole thing:
Prior to v1.8.3.2 this still sort-of works (as you observe below),
because the code fails to realize the remote is invalid, and falls back
to setting branch.feat-bar.remote = "." (i.e. the current repo). This
might seem like an ok practice until you realize that a "git push" back
to that invalid upstream would happily overwrite
refs/remotes/(mirror/)feat-bar, and thus break git-svn's internal state.  
This bug was fixed in v1.8.3.2, more specifically 41c21f22 (branch.c:
Validate tracking branches with refspecs instead of refs/remotes/*),
and you can read more about the rationale in that commit message. 
So, how long do we have to put up with this? Well, by the looks of things, the default prefix thing won't be addressed before Git 1.9 or 2.0 (some time in 2014?), and I'm not even sure the easy tracking stuff will be fixed then at all.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Open source CMS evaluations

I have now seen three more or less serious open source CMS reviews. First guy to hit the field was Matt Raible ( 1 2 3 4 ), ending up with Drupal , Joomla , Magnolia , OpenCms and MeshCMS being runner-ups. Then there is OpenAdvantage that tries out a handful ( Drupal , Exponent CMS , Lenya , Mambo , and Silva ), including Plone which they use for their own site (funny/annoying that the entire site has no RSS-feeds, nor is it possible to comment on the articles), following Matt's approach by exluding many CMS that seem not to fit the criteria. It is somewhat strange that OpenAdvantage cuts away Magnolia because it "Requires J2EE server; difficult to install and configure; more of a framework than CMS", and proceed to include Apache Lenya in the full evaluation. Magnolia does not require a J2EE server. It runs on Tomcat just like Lenya does (maybe it's an idea to bundle Magnolia with Jetty to make it seem more lightweight). I'm still sure that OpenAdvant

Considerations for JavaScript in Modern (2013) Java/Maven Projects

Disclaimer: I'm a Java developer, not a JavaScript developer. This is just what I've picked up the last years plus a little research the last days. It's just a snapshot of my current knowledge and opinions on the day of writing, apt to change over the next weeks/months. We've gone all modern in our web applications, doing MVC on the client side with AngularJS or Ember , building single-page webapps with REST backends. But how are we managing the growing amount of JavaScript in our application? Yeoman 's logo (not necessarily the conclusion of this blog post) You ain't in Kansas anymore So far we've just been doing half-random stuff. We download some version of a library and throw it into our src/main/webapp/js/lib , or we use it from a CDN , which may be down or unreachable when we want to use the application.. Some times the JS is minified, other times it's not. Some times we name the file with version number, other times without. Some

Managing dot-files with vcsh and myrepos

Say I want to get my dot-files out on a new computer. Here's what I do: # install vcsh & myrepos via apt/brew/etc vcsh clone https://github.com/tfnico/config-mr.git mr mr update Done! All dot-files are ready to use and in place. No deploy command, no linking up symlinks to the files . No checking/out in my entire home directory as a Git repository. Yet, all my dot-files are neatly kept in fine-grained repositories, and any changes I make are immediately ready to be committed: config-atom.git     -> ~/.atom/* config-mr.git     -> ~/.mrconfig     -> ~/.config/mr/* config-tmuxinator.git       -> ~/.tmuxinator/* config-vim.git     -> ~/.vimrc     -> ~/.vim/* config-bin.git        -> ~/bin/* config-git.git               -> ~/.gitconfig config-tmux.git       -> ~/.tmux.conf     config-zsh.git     -> ~/.zshrc How can this be? The key here is to use vcsh to keep track of your dot-files, and its partner myrepos/mr for o

What I've Learned After a Month of Podcasting

So, it's been about a month since I launched   GitMinutes , and wow, it's been a fun ride. I have gotten a lot of feedback, and a lot more downloads/listeners than I had expected! Judging the numbers is hard, but a generous estimate is that somewhere around 2000-3000 have listened to the podcast, and about 500-1000 regularly download. Considering that only a percentage of my target audience actively listen to podcasts, these are some pretty good numbers. I've heard that 10% of the general population in the western world regularly listen to podcasts (probably a bit higher percentage among Git users), so I like to think I've reached a big chunk of the Git pros out there. GitMinutes has gathered 110 followers on Twitter, and 63, erm.. circlers on Google+, and it has received 117 +'es! And it's been flattr'ed twice :) Here are some of the things I learned during this last month: Conceptually.. Starting my own sandbox podcast for trying out everythin

Git Stash Blooper (Could not restore untracked files from stash)

The other day I accidentally did a git stash -a , which means it stashes *everything*, including ignored output files (target, build, classes, etc). Ooooops.. What I meant to do was git stash -u , meaning stash modifications plus untracked new files. Anyhows, I ended up with a big fat stash I couldn't get back out. Each time I tried, I got something like this: .../target/temp/dozer.jar already exists, no checkout .../target/temp/core.jar already exists, no checkout .../target/temp/joda-time.jar already exists, no checkout .../target/foo.war already exists, no checkout Could not restore untracked files from stash No matter how I tried checking out different revisions (like the one where I actually made the stash), or using --force, I got the same error. Now these were one of those "keep cool for a second, there's a git way to fix this"situation. I figured: A stash is basically a commit. If we look at my recent commits using   git log --graph --