1GITCVS-MIGRATION(7)               Git Manual               GITCVS-MIGRATION(7)
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NAME

6       gitcvs-migration - Git for CVS users
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SYNOPSIS

9       git cvsimport *
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11

DESCRIPTION

13       Git differs from CVS in that every working tree contains a repository
14       with a full copy of the project history, and no repository is
15       inherently more important than any other. However, you can emulate the
16       CVS model by designating a single shared repository which people can
17       synchronize with; this document explains how to do that.
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19       Some basic familiarity with Git is required. Having gone through
20       gittutorial(7) and gitglossary(7) should be sufficient.
21

DEVELOPING AGAINST A SHARED REPOSITORY

23       Suppose a shared repository is set up in /pub/repo.git on the host
24       foo.com. Then as an individual committer you can clone the shared
25       repository over ssh with:
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27           $ git clone foo.com:/pub/repo.git/ my-project
28           $ cd my-project
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30
31       and hack away. The equivalent of cvs update is
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33           $ git pull origin
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35
36       which merges in any work that others might have done since the clone
37       operation. If there are uncommitted changes in your working tree,
38       commit them first before running git pull.
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40           Note
41           The pull command knows where to get updates from because of certain
42           configuration variables that were set by the first git clone
43           command; see git config -l and the git-config(1) man page for
44           details.
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46       You can update the shared repository with your changes by first
47       committing your changes, and then using the git push command:
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49           $ git push origin master
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51
52       to "push" those commits to the shared repository. If someone else has
53       updated the repository more recently, git push, like cvs commit, will
54       complain, in which case you must pull any changes before attempting the
55       push again.
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57       In the git push command above we specify the name of the remote branch
58       to update (master). If we leave that out, git push tries to update any
59       branches in the remote repository that have the same name as a branch
60       in the local repository. So the last push can be done with either of:
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62           $ git push origin
63           $ git push foo.com:/pub/project.git/
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65
66       as long as the shared repository does not have any branches other than
67       master.
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SETTING UP A SHARED REPOSITORY

70       We assume you have already created a Git repository for your project,
71       possibly created from scratch or from a tarball (see gittutorial(7)),
72       or imported from an already existing CVS repository (see the next
73       section).
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75       Assume your existing repo is at /home/alice/myproject. Create a new
76       "bare" repository (a repository without a working tree) and fetch your
77       project into it:
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79           $ mkdir /pub/my-repo.git
80           $ cd /pub/my-repo.git
81           $ git --bare init --shared
82           $ git --bare fetch /home/alice/myproject master:master
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84
85       Next, give every team member read/write access to this repository. One
86       easy way to do this is to give all the team members ssh access to the
87       machine where the repository is hosted. If you don’t want to give them
88       a full shell on the machine, there is a restricted shell which only
89       allows users to do Git pushes and pulls; see git-shell(1).
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91       Put all the committers in the same group, and make the repository
92       writable by that group:
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94           $ chgrp -R $group /pub/my-repo.git
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96
97       Make sure committers have a umask of at most 027, so that the
98       directories they create are writable and searchable by other group
99       members.
100

IMPORTING A CVS ARCHIVE

102           Note
103           These instructions use the git-cvsimport script which ships with
104           git, but other importers may provide better results. See the note
105           in git-cvsimport(1) for other options.
106
107       First, install version 2.1 or higher of cvsps from
108       https://github.com/andreyvit/cvsps and make sure it is in your path.
109       Then cd to a checked out CVS working directory of the project you are
110       interested in and run git-cvsimport(1):
111
112           $ git cvsimport -C <destination> <module>
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114
115       This puts a Git archive of the named CVS module in the directory
116       <destination>, which will be created if necessary.
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118       The import checks out from CVS every revision of every file. Reportedly
119       cvsimport can average some twenty revisions per second, so for a
120       medium-sized project this should not take more than a couple of
121       minutes. Larger projects or remote repositories may take longer.
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123       The main trunk is stored in the Git branch named origin, and additional
124       CVS branches are stored in Git branches with the same names. The most
125       recent version of the main trunk is also left checked out on the master
126       branch, so you can start adding your own changes right away.
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128       The import is incremental, so if you call it again next month it will
129       fetch any CVS updates that have been made in the meantime. For this to
130       work, you must not modify the imported branches; instead, create new
131       branches for your own changes, and merge in the imported branches as
132       necessary.
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134       If you want a shared repository, you will need to make a bare clone of
135       the imported directory, as described above. Then treat the imported
136       directory as another development clone for purposes of merging
137       incremental imports.
138

ADVANCED SHARED REPOSITORY MANAGEMENT

140       Git allows you to specify scripts called "hooks" to be run at certain
141       points. You can use these, for example, to send all commits to the
142       shared repository to a mailing list. See githooks(5).
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144       You can enforce finer grained permissions using update hooks. See
145       Controlling access to branches using update hooks[1].
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PROVIDING CVS ACCESS TO A GIT REPOSITORY

148       It is also possible to provide true CVS access to a Git repository, so
149       that developers can still use CVS; see git-cvsserver(1) for details.
150

ALTERNATIVE DEVELOPMENT MODELS

152       CVS users are accustomed to giving a group of developers commit access
153       to a common repository. As we’ve seen, this is also possible with Git.
154       However, the distributed nature of Git allows other development models,
155       and you may want to first consider whether one of them might be a
156       better fit for your project.
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158       For example, you can choose a single person to maintain the project’s
159       primary public repository. Other developers then clone this repository
160       and each work in their own clone. When they have a series of changes
161       that they’re happy with, they ask the maintainer to pull from the
162       branch containing the changes. The maintainer reviews their changes and
163       pulls them into the primary repository, which other developers pull
164       from as necessary to stay coordinated. The Linux kernel and other
165       projects use variants of this model.
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167       With a small group, developers may just pull changes from each other’s
168       repositories without the need for a central maintainer.
169

SEE ALSO

171       gittutorial(7), gittutorial-2(7), gitcore-tutorial(7), gitglossary(7),
172       giteveryday(7), The Git User’s Manual[2]
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GIT

175       Part of the git(1) suite
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NOTES

178        1. Controlling access to branches using update hooks
179           file:///usr/share/doc/git/howto/update-hook-example.html
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181        2. The Git User’s Manual
182           file:///usr/share/doc/git/user-manual.html
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186Git 2.20.1                        12/15/2018               GITCVS-MIGRATION(7)
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