Git import issues

Git import issues

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi,

I discovered scary things in our new Git repository, more precisely in
the `branch_release-1-8' branch, and I'm wondering how I can have missed
them earlier given that I already committed and rebuilt things in that
branch earlier.

Basically "master" is OK, but commits are missing in branches,
apparently only commits that add or remove files.

For example, `branch_release-1-8' lacks "{check,benchmark}-guile.in" and
"doc/r5rs/r5rs.texi"; conversely, it has "acconfig.h", an old file that
had been deleted long ago.

Han-Wen's import does not have these problems [0], and the CVS repo
either [1].  Eric Blake reported similar problems about his import of
GNU M4 a while back [2].

I emailed Han-Wen and Eric to get advice from them.  I'm also
considering other methods such as using `cvs2git' [3] to do the import
(which Dale P. Smith actually suggested on IRC some time ago, although I
didn't see any compelling reason to use it back then...).

I apologize for this problem and the inconvenience it causes, which
demonstrate my excess of confidence on that matter.  I'll try hard to
fix it ASAP.  Hopefully it should be fairly easy to recommit the few
patches that were committed to the Git repo if we need to start with a
fresh import.

Thanks,
Ludovic.

[0] http://repo.or.cz/w/guile.git?a=tree;h=0e438375ff6f64cbd569e896a976ae1ddb099650;hb=0e438375ff6f64cbd569e896a976ae1ddb099650
[1] http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/guile/guile/guile-core/?hideattic=0
[2] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/58817
[3] http://cvs2svn.tigris.org/cvs2git.html

Re: Git import issues

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi all,

After several trial and errors, a bit of googling, etc., I had to face
it: `git-cvsimport' just doesn't manage to properly keep track of
branches (there's been recent discussion on this topic on the Git list
[0], giving the impression that `git-cvsimport' just can't do the job
accurately).

Fortunately, there are several alternatives [1].  I decided to try
`cvs2git' [2], which is part of `cvs2svn'.  The resulting import does
not have the problems of the one currently on-line.

To get more confidence in its correctness, I checked out "HEAD" and
"branch_release-1-{6,8}" from CVS and then compared with `diff' the
CVS-checkout and the Git-checkout trees for these branches (modulo `CVS'
directories).  The only differences are the CVS keyword in "qt/b.h" and
deleted directories that are still visible in the CVS checkout but not
in the import.

For completeness, I also cloned the import, bootstrapped/built all 3
branches (BTW, 1.6's `autogen.sh' would need to be updated), and
successfully ran "make check".

The new repo takes 23 MiB after gc [3] and has 94 tags, 18 branches, and
10161 commits on `master' and 10617 on `branch_release-1-8'
(interestingly, the broken repo had only 3863 on that branch!).


This makes me confident that the import is not broken this time.  Thus
I'm planning to ask the Savannah admins to remove the old one and
replace it with this one today.  I'll take care of reapplying patches
that were applied after the CVS import to the Git repository.  If anyone
has patches in their local Git repository cloned from the repository
that's going to be replaced, I can describe the procedure used to
reapply them on a newly-cloned repository.

Thanks,
Ludovic.

[0] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/78674
[1] http://git.or.cz/gitwiki/InterfacesFrontendsAndTools#head-8870e1c81cc93f9a7a7acb5e969924ee60182d6b
[2] http://cvs2svn.tigris.org/cvs2git.html
[3] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.subversion.cvs2svn.devel/2154

Re: Git import issues

[Ludovic Courtès]

OK, the new Git repository is now on-line.  Make sure to `git-clone'
from it and to stop working on old clones.

Thanks,
Ludovic.