Git / Subversion :- Retrieving an Old Branch

When I first started using Git and Subversion together, I decided that I didn't want the entire Subversion repository on my machine. Instead of cloning the entire Subversion repository, I cloned the last 1000 revisions. This has been working very well for me until today.

Today, we discovered a defect on a branch that was created and deployed well before the starting point in Subversion that I decided to clone from. If instead, the branch was created within the last 1000 revisions, I would have had that branch in my local Git repository. I could have checked that branch out, created a tracking branch, made the necessary code changes, merged it back into the master and sent it upstream to Subversion. But, this was not the case. The Subversion branch that needed code change was not in my local Git repository. How would I get it in there?

After doing some browsing on the internet, I think I came up with a solution that was inspired by a blog post titled Complex SVN repository conversion to Git, by Simeon Pilgrim. While Simeon was not dealing with the same problem that I was dealing with, the solution that he used for his situation could easily be molded to help me with mine.

What I ended up doing was hand modifying the config file that is located within the .git directory in the repository. I added another remote Subversion repository entry. This entry was just going to be used to track the one branch. Here are the details of that entry:


[svn-remote "0.5.0"]
url = http://subversion.sagetech.com/svn/somethingReallyCool/branches
fetch = 0.5.0:refs/remotes/svn/0.5.0

This entry above is telling Git that I have a remote Subversion repository that will be aliased as 0.5.0. It also tells Git the URL of the repository as well as the path that should be used for fetching. The fetch actually specifies two paths separated by a colon in the following format "origin:destination". This line is saying that it will pull the code that resides in...

http://subversion.sagetech.com/svn/somethingReallyCool/branches/0.5.0

and put it into the Git remote branch at refs/remotes/svn/0.5.0.

After this entry was made into the .git/config file, all that was left to do was to fetch the code. That was done with the following command:

git svn fetch -r1200:HEAD 0.5.0

This fetched from the Subversion branch 0.5.0 into my Git Remote branch all of the revisions starting at 1200, and allowed me to fix the defect and publish back to the 0.5.0 branch.

Happy Coding