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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DESCRIPTION

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

DEVELOPING AGAINST A SHARED REPOSITORY

22       Suppose a shared repository is set up in /pub/repo.git on the host
23       foo.com. Then as an individual committer you can clone the shared
24       repository over ssh with:
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26           $ git clone foo.com:/pub/repo.git/ my-project
27           $ cd my-project
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29
30       and hack away. The equivalent of cvs update is
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32           $ git pull origin
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34
35       which merges in any work that others might have done since the clone
36       operation. If there are uncommitted changes in your working tree,
37       commit them first before running git pull.
38
39           Note
40           The pull command knows where to get updates from because of certain
41           configuration variables that were set by the first git clone
42           command; see git config -l and the git-config(1) man page for
43           details.
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45       You can update the shared repository with your changes by first
46       committing your changes, and then using the git push command:
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48           $ git push origin master
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50
51       to "push" those commits to the shared repository. If someone else has
52       updated the repository more recently, git push, like cvs commit, will
53       complain, in which case you must pull any changes before attempting the
54       push again.
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56       In the git push command above we specify the name of the remote branch
57       to update (master). If we leave that out, git push tries to update any
58       branches in the remote repository that have the same name as a branch
59       in the local repository. So the last push can be done with either of:
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61           $ git push origin
62           $ git push foo.com:/pub/project.git/
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65       as long as the shared repository does not have any branches other than
66       master.
67

SETTING UP A SHARED REPOSITORY

69       We assume you have already created a git repository for your project,
70       possibly created from scratch or from a tarball (see gittutorial(7)),
71       or imported from an already existing CVS repository (see the next
72       section).
73
74       Assume your existing repo is at /home/alice/myproject. Create a new
75       "bare" repository (a repository without a working tree) and fetch your
76       project into it:
77
78           $ mkdir /pub/my-repo.git
79           $ cd /pub/my-repo.git
80           $ git --bare init --shared
81           $ git --bare fetch /home/alice/myproject master:master
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83
84       Next, give every team member read/write access to this repository. One
85       easy way to do this is to give all the team members ssh access to the
86       machine where the repository is hosted. If you don’t want to give them
87       a full shell on the machine, there is a restricted shell which only
88       allows users to do git pushes and pulls; see git-shell(1).
89
90       Put all the committers in the same group, and make the repository
91       writable by that group:
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93           $ chgrp -R $group /pub/my-repo.git
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95
96       Make sure committers have a umask of at most 027, so that the
97       directories they create are writable and searchable by other group
98       members.
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IMPORTING A CVS ARCHIVE

101       First, install version 2.1 or higher of cvsps from
102       http://www.cobite.com/cvsps/ and make sure it is in your path. Then cd
103       to a checked out CVS working directory of the project you are
104       interested in and run git-cvsimport(1):
105
106           $ git cvsimport -C <destination> <module>
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108
109       This puts a git archive of the named CVS module in the directory
110       <destination>, which will be created if necessary.
111
112       The import checks out from CVS every revision of every file. Reportedly
113       cvsimport can average some twenty revisions per second, so for a
114       medium-sized project this should not take more than a couple of
115       minutes. Larger projects or remote repositories may take longer.
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117       The main trunk is stored in the git branch named origin, and additional
118       CVS branches are stored in git branches with the same names. The most
119       recent version of the main trunk is also left checked out on the master
120       branch, so you can start adding your own changes right away.
121
122       The import is incremental, so if you call it again next month it will
123       fetch any CVS updates that have been made in the meantime. For this to
124       work, you must not modify the imported branches; instead, create new
125       branches for your own changes, and merge in the imported branches as
126       necessary.
127
128       If you want a shared repository, you will need to make a bare clone of
129       the imported directory, as described above. Then treat the imported
130       directory as another development clone for purposes of merging
131       incremental imports.
132

ADVANCED SHARED REPOSITORY MANAGEMENT

134       Git allows you to specify scripts called "hooks" to be run at certain
135       points. You can use these, for example, to send all commits to the
136       shared repository to a mailing list. See githooks(5).
137
138       You can enforce finer grained permissions using update hooks. See
139       Controlling access to branches using update hooks[1].
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PROVIDING CVS ACCESS TO A GIT REPOSITORY

142       It is also possible to provide true CVS access to a git repository, so
143       that developers can still use CVS; see git-cvsserver(1) for details.
144

ALTERNATIVE DEVELOPMENT MODELS

146       CVS users are accustomed to giving a group of developers commit access
147       to a common repository. As we’ve seen, this is also possible with git.
148       However, the distributed nature of git allows other development models,
149       and you may want to first consider whether one of them might be a
150       better fit for your project.
151
152       For example, you can choose a single person to maintain the project’s
153       primary public repository. Other developers then clone this repository
154       and each work in their own clone. When they have a series of changes
155       that they’re happy with, they ask the maintainer to pull from the
156       branch containing the changes. The maintainer reviews their changes and
157       pulls them into the primary repository, which other developers pull
158       from as necessary to stay coordinated. The Linux kernel and other
159       projects use variants of this model.
160
161       With a small group, developers may just pull changes from each other’s
162       repositories without the need for a central maintainer.
163

SEE ALSO

165       gittutorial(7), gittutorial-2(7), gitcore-tutorial(7), gitglossary(7),
166       Everyday Git[2], The Git User’s Manual[3]
167

GIT

169       Part of the git(1) suite.
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NOTES

172        1. Controlling access to branches using update hooks
173           file:///usr/share/doc/git-1.7.4.4/howto/update-hook-example.txt
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175        2. Everyday Git
176           file:///usr/share/doc/git-1.7.4.4/everyday.html
177
178        3. The Git User’s Manual
179           file:///usr/share/doc/git-1.7.4.4/user-manual.html
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183Git 1.7.4.4                       04/11/2011               GITCVS-MIGRATION(7)
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