GITCVS-MIGRATION(7)                                        Git Manual                                        GITCVS-MIGRATION(7)



NAME
       gitcvs-migration - git for CVS users

SYNOPSIS
       git cvsimport *

DESCRIPTION
       Git differs from CVS in that every working tree contains a repository with a full copy of the project history, and no
       repository is inherently more important than any other. However, you can emulate the CVS model by designating a single
       shared repository which people can synchronize with; this document explains how to do that.

       Some basic familiarity with git is required. Having gone through gittutorial(7) and gitglossary(7) should be sufficient.

DEVELOPING AGAINST A SHARED REPOSITORY
       Suppose a shared repository is set up in /pub/repo.git on the host foo.com. Then as an individual committer you can clone
       the shared repository over ssh with:

           $ git clone foo.com:/pub/repo.git/ my-project
           $ cd my-project


       and hack away. The equivalent of cvs update is

           $ git pull origin


       which merges in any work that others might have done since the clone operation. If there are uncommitted changes in your
       working tree, commit them first before running git pull.

           Note
           The pull command knows where to get updates from because of certain configuration variables that were set by the
           first git clone command; see git config -l and the git-config(1) man page for details.

       You can update the shared repository with your changes by first committing your changes, and then using the git push
       command:

           $ git push origin master


       to "push" those commits to the shared repository. If someone else has updated the repository more recently, git push,
       like cvs commit, will complain, in which case you must pull any changes before attempting the push again.

       In the git push command above we specify the name of the remote branch to update (master). If we leave that out, git push
       tries to update any branches in the remote repository that have the same name as a branch in the local repository. So the
       last push can be done with either of:

           $ git push origin
           $ git push foo.com:/pub/project.git/


       as long as the shared repository does not have any branches other than master.

SETTING UP A SHARED REPOSITORY
       We assume you have already created a git repository for your project, possibly created from scratch or from a tarball
       (see gittutorial(7)), or imported from an already existing CVS repository (see the next section).

       Assume your existing repo is at /home/alice/myproject. Create a new "bare" repository (a repository without a working
       tree) and fetch your project into it:

           $ mkdir /pub/my-repo.git
           $ cd /pub/my-repo.git
           $ git --bare init --shared
           $ git --bare fetch /home/alice/myproject master:master


       Next, give every team member read/write access to this repository. One easy way to do this is to give all the team
       members ssh access to the machine where the repository is hosted. If you don't want to give them a full shell on the
       machine, there is a restricted shell which only allows users to do git pushes and pulls; see git-shell(1).

       Put all the committers in the same group, and make the repository writable by that group:

           $ chgrp -R $group /pub/my-repo.git


       Make sure committers have a umask of at most 027, so that the directories they create are writable and searchable by
       other group members.

IMPORTING A CVS ARCHIVE
       First, install version 2.1 or higher of cvsps from http://www.cobite.com/cvsps/ and make sure it is in your path. Then cd
       to a checked out CVS working directory of the project you are interested in and run git-cvsimport(1):

           $ git cvsimport -C <destination> <module>


       This puts a git archive of the named CVS module in the directory <destination>, which will be created if necessary.

       The import checks out from CVS every revision of every file. Reportedly cvsimport can average some twenty revisions per
       second, so for a medium-sized project this should not take more than a couple of minutes. Larger projects or remote
       repositories may take longer.

       The main trunk is stored in the git branch named origin, and additional CVS branches are stored in git branches with the
       same names. The most recent version of the main trunk is also left checked out on the master branch, so you can start
       adding your own changes right away.

       The import is incremental, so if you call it again next month it will fetch any CVS updates that have been made in the
       meantime. For this to work, you must not modify the imported branches; instead, create new branches for your own changes,
       and merge in the imported branches as necessary.

       If you want a shared repository, you will need to make a bare clone of the imported directory, as described above. Then
       treat the imported directory as another development clone for purposes of merging incremental imports.

ADVANCED SHARED REPOSITORY MANAGEMENT
       Git allows you to specify scripts called "hooks" to be run at certain points. You can use these, for example, to send all
       commits to the shared repository to a mailing list. See githooks(5).

       You can enforce finer grained permissions using update hooks. See Controlling access to branches using update hooks[1].

PROVIDING CVS ACCESS TO A GIT REPOSITORY
       It is also possible to provide true CVS access to a git repository, so that developers can still use CVS; see git-
       cvsserver(1) for details.

ALTERNATIVE DEVELOPMENT MODELS
       CVS users are accustomed to giving a group of developers commit access to a common repository. As we've seen, this is
       also possible with git. However, the distributed nature of git allows other development models, and you may want to first
       consider whether one of them might be a better fit for your project.

       For example, you can choose a single person to maintain the project's primary public repository. Other developers then
       clone this repository and each work in their own clone. When they have a series of changes that they're happy with, they
       ask the maintainer to pull from the branch containing the changes. The maintainer reviews their changes and pulls them
       into the primary repository, which other developers pull from as necessary to stay coordinated. The Linux kernel and
       other projects use variants of this model.

       With a small group, developers may just pull changes from each other's repositories without the need for a central
       maintainer.

SEE ALSO
       gittutorial(7), gittutorial-2(7), gitcore-tutorial(7), gitglossary(7), Everyday Git[2], The Git User's Manual[3]

GIT
       Part of the git(1) suite.

NOTES
        1. Controlling access to branches using update hooks
           file:///usr/share/doc/git-1.7.4.4/howto/update-hook-example.txt

        2. Everyday Git
           file:///usr/share/doc/git-1.7.4.4/everyday.html

        3. The Git User's Manual
           file:///usr/share/doc/git-1.7.4.4/user-manual.html



Git 1.7.4.4                                                04/11/2011                                        GITCVS-MIGRATION(7)