GitCVS
Background and Motivation
Many groups have local CVS repositories with their private code, and haven't yet migrated to Subversion or a newer version control system. This guide describes how to use Git to import the code from these repositories and to commit changes back to them, so that you can get the benefits of Git (local history, local commits, branching workflow, independence of the server).
For more detailed background material and other information on Git and VXL, see the wiki page GitSvn.
CVS import into a local Git repository
In my group I copied my-lab-vxlsrc (this is a directory with the name of the CVS module of interest) and the CVSROOT dir from /path/to/cvsroot to my local disk. I placed them in a directory, let's call it my-lab-cvsroot.
Create a dir, say, my-lab-git, chdir in there, and do:
$ git cvsimport -d /path/to/my-lab-cvsroot -r cvs -k -v my-lab-vxlsrc
This takes about 40min.
Basic configs from inside the newly created git repository
git config cvsimport.module lemsvxlsrc git config cvsimport.r cvs git config cvsimport.d :ext:server.yourlab.edu:/path/to/cvsroot
Test updating from cvs, now remotely
# MAKE SURE YOU'RE IN THE ROOT DIRECTORY OF YOUR GIT REPOSITORY AND IN MASTER $ git cvsimport # MAKE SURE YOU'RE IN THE ROOT DIRECTORY OF YOUR GIT REPOSITORY AND IN MASTER
This takes 1min from East coast to West coast and it fetched changes committed in the interim very well.
Exporting Changes to CVS
Work on a topic branch and create a merge commit on an up-to-date master and export that single merge commit to CVS. This won't work if your merge was a fast-forward, so you have to use the --no-ff option when performing the merge.
$ git config cvsexportcommit.cvsdir /path/to/cvs/checkout
# on master $ git merge --no-ff --log -m "Optional commit message here" topic/branch/name $ git cvsexportcommit -u -p -c ORIG_HEAD HEAD
Shortcomings
You need to keep a CVS checkout around. Also, you tend not to commit code remotely since it is so easy to commit to your local repository, and relatively painful to merge and cvsexportcommit every time. Backups are crucial here.
References
* Stack Overflow Article
* Complementary Information
Questions
If you have any questions, feel free to contact Ricardo Fabbri (ricardofabbri at users.sf.net) or the vxl-users list.
