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I m trying out git-svn and I am getting the following error. What I've done so far is 

 git svn init -T <my svn repo>

then I've been committing to my repository with

 git commit -a

then once I did a few of those I did a

 git svn fetch

and then I tried a 

 git svn dcommit

However, that fails with

Unable to determine the upstream SVN information from HEAD history. Perhaps the repository is empty

I can also see that the files in my file system are not marked as being used by svn (not sure if this should happen or not) though. If I browse the svn repository (with repo browser) I can see that the original files are there.

After this original failure I tried rebasing without much success (it throws some other error).

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  • I assume this is related to the fact, that the SVN repository is empty at the beginning. Not sure whether this is a limitation of git-svn. Commented Apr 10, 2016 at 8:17

5 Answers 5

Reset to default
3

I found that, when the SVN repo was empty git-svn throws

Unable to determine upstream SVN information from HEAD history

So using SVN I checked in a text file as the first commit

svn add test.txt; svn commit -m "test file"

Then I was able to do a git svn clone and that fixed everything.

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2

This site fixed the issue for me: http://eikke.com/importing-a-git-tree-into-a-subversion-repository/. Direct quote:

The issue is that the SVN metadata has been lost. To fix this, we can use a Git graft to link them. We’ll tell Git the commit which created the SVN folder in which we want to store the project is the parent commit of the first commit in our Git repository:

$ git show-ref trunk 
> 741ab63aea786882eafd38dc74369e651f554c9c refs/remotes/trunk 
$ $ git log --pretty=oneline master | tail -n1
> 88464cfdf549a82b30ee7c52e53e2b310f0d9ec4 Initial version  
$ echo "88464cfdf549a82b30ee7c52e53e2b310f0d9ec4 741ab63aea786882eafd38dc74369e651f554c9c" >> .git/info/grafts`
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+50

Is it a general git-svn limitation? Or exists the problem between keyboard and chair?

This error message was introduced in git 1.5.1 (Feb. 2007) by commit a8ae262

Since you're committing from HEAD (or another commit that is a parent of HEAD), you'll be able to find a commit with metadata information containing the SVN URL that your HEAD was descended from anyways.

So git needs to find a commit including the SVN URL in order for a dcommit of one of your branch to work properly.

Or exists the problem between keyboard and chair?

That can happen if you select one of your branch created before git svn clone. You need to work with branches created on top of the ones imported from SVN by git svn clone.

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2 Comments

With other words: Git-svn cannot handle empty Subversion repositories.
@usr1234567 indeed, that seems to be the case.
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The git svn commands are similar to dealing with a normal remote (the svn remote is named git-svn). fetch just downloads commits from the remote, it doesn't connect them to your tree in any way. It will work if you fetch right after initing, since you don't have a tree yet, but you committed first. You want to use git svn rebase, which will rebase your tree onto the svn head. Normally you git svn fetch right after git svn init, or just use git svn clone, which does both. Once the initial repository is set up you can just use git svn rebase all the time, which fetches and rebases in one operation

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hi Michael. thanks for the explanation . I didnt know that I needed to rebase before starting committing to the git repo . I tried giot svn rebase (as i said in my post) but it throws Unable to determine upstream SVN information from working tree dictionary
@Miau I'm not sure how to fix your existing repository; you may need to create a new one and set up the svn remote properly before you commit anything
One thing you could do is try saving your commits as patches and then do a git reset --hard. Then do git svn fetch and git svn rebase to get the upstream updates. Then apply your patches and commit. This may work.
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Just a guess, try git svn clone, then change/commit files, then git svn dcommit. This is the way I usually do it and it works (in my case).

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Does this also work with a SVN repository, that hasN#t got any commit yet?

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