Re: git-svn: Handling of branches created from subfolders

On 20. Aug 2017, at 12:27 , Andreas Heiduk [off-list ref] wrote:

Am 19.08.2017 um 14:45 schrieb Jan Teske:

quoted

Is there any way to fix such branches from subfolders in a way that they integrate correctly with the converted git repository, without losing any (or at least too much) history? If this is not possible with git-svn directly, maybe I could prepare the SVN repo or post-process the converted git repository somehow?

You can use `git replace --graft` to connect the first commit of the
loose branches with their source. After all connections are in place you
can use `git filter-branch` to make the replacements permanent.

This will not change the content or directory structure of branch1 or
branch2 but the diff with their parent commits will show up as a huge
delete/rename operation. So merging/Cherry-picking between trunk and
branch1/branch2 will be ... challenging.

That’s really helpful, thanks!

I even solved the problem of the challenging merging between the converted branches and trunk by using another filter-branch to rewrite all the commits in branch1/branch2 to make all their modifications in the respective subfolders (effectively fixing the directory structure to fit trunk). This answer was helpful for how to do this: https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/280229

So, for future reference, the following post-processing seems to work:

1. Use filter-branch to move all the commits the the correct subfolder.
2. Use `git replace --graft` to connect the first commit of the branch to its correct parent commit.
3. Use `git replace --graft` to add the missing parents of any merge commits the branch was part of.
4. Use filter-branch again to make the replacements permanent.