Cloning a Non-Standard Svn Repository with Git-Svn

Question

I'm relatively new to Git, but I've found it so easy to work with at home that I'd like to use it at work where our projects are stored in Svn repositories. Unfortunately, the repositories are slightly non-standard and I'm having trouble getting them cloned. Sure, they all have trunk, branches/ and tags/, but branches/ and tags/ have subdirectories before hitting the real project directories:

trunk/
branches/maintenance/release1
branches/maintenance/release2
...
branches/development/feature1
branches/development/feature2
...
tags/build/build1
tags/build/build2
...
tags/release/release1
tags/release/release2

After cloning:

$ git svn clone -s --prefix=svn/ https://mydomain.com/svnproject
$ git branch -r
  development
  development@1340
  maintenance
  maintenance@1340
  tags/build
  tags/build@1340
  tags/release
  tags/release@1340
  trunk
  trunk@1340 

I get none of the actual project branches or tags. I actually need to be able to work on the trunk, one maintenance branch and one development branch. I've tried this approach in addition to several hacks at modifying the config, but nothing is working for me.

Is there any way I can get the key components of my non-standard Svn project into a local git repository so that I can easily move between them?

Many thanks.

UPDATE: I should add that I can't do a wholesale switch to Git (yet). There are other team members involved and an international presence. The logistics of the transition are more than I'm willing to undertake until I'm much more comfortable with Git; as I mentioned, I'm still pretty new. I've barely scratched the surface of its capabilities.

Answer 1

Lee B was right. The answer, provided by doener in #git, is to upgrade Git to 1.6.x (I had been using 1.5.x). 1.6.x offers deep cloning so that multiple wildcards can be used with the --branches option:

$ git svn clone https://svn.myrepos.com/myproject web-self-serve \ 
          --trunk=trunk --branches=branches/*/* --prefix=svn/
$ git branch -r
  svn/development/sandbox1
  svn/development/feature1
  svn/development/sandbox2
  svn/development/sandbox3
  svn/development/model-associations
  svn/maintenance/version1.0.0
  svn/trunk

Exactly what I needed. Thanks for the insight, all.

Answer 2

For repo layouts not served by plain wildcards: (from my answer to this related question)

The current git-svn manpage says:

It is also possible to fetch a subset of branches or tags by using a comma-separated list of names within braces. For example:

[svn-remote "huge-project"]
     url = http://server.org/svn
     fetch = trunk/src:refs/remotes/trunk
     branches = branches/{red,green}/src:refs/remotes/branches/*
     tags = tags/{1.0,2.0}/src:refs/remotes/tags/*

Answer 3

Could you try nirvdrum's svn2git (seems the most up-to-date) in order to import your svn into a git repository ?
(Early 2009, Paul mentioned this iteman's svn2git in replacement of this original jcoglan's svn2git, which was, as his author mentioned: "a quick hack to get my code out of Subversion")

It is better than git svn clone because if you have this code in svn:

  trunk
    ...
  branches
    1.x
    2.x
  tags
    1.0.0
    1.0.1
    1.0.2
    1.1.0
    2.0.0

git-svn will go through the commit history to build a new git repo.
It will import all branches and tags as remote svn branches, whereas what you really want is git-native local branches and git tag objects.
So after importing this project, you would get:

  $ git branch
  * master
  $ git branch -a
  * master
    1.x
    2.x
    tags/1.0.0
    tags/1.0.1
    tags/1.0.2
    tags/1.1.0
    tags/2.0.0
    trunk
  $ git tag -l
  [ empty ]

After svn2git is done with your project, you'll get this instead:

  $ git branch
  * master
    1.x
    2.x
  $ git tag -l
    1.0.0
    1.0.1
    1.0.2
    1.1.0
    2.0.0

---

Of course, this solution is not meant as a one-way trip.

You can always go back to your svn repository, with... git2svn (also present there)

The idea remain:

• SVN at work as a central repository.

• Git "elsewhere" to quickly experiment amongst multiple Git-private branches.

• import back only consolidated Git branches into official SVN branches.