Re: Copying a CVS repository

John P Cavanaugh <cavanaug@soco.agilent.com> writes:
> I would recommend against trying to parse all the *,v files from CVS.
> Instead I think using pure cvs commands to get/extract information and
> pure svn commands to add/insert information would be better.

I agree that efficiency is a secondary concern with conversion
scripts, but if a tree is taking days to convert, then some people
will have a problem. For example, the RedHat/Cygnus GNU tool set
`comp-tools' is something like 200 megs per checkout, and therefore
many more megs in the repository. Converting that whole history to
Subversion, using CVS as an intermediary, might be really painful for
their engineers.

So I don't think parsing the ,v files should be completely out of the
question, especially if there's existing C code (or Perl?) to help
with RCS format. For example, it may make sense to parse at least the
symbolic_names sections from the RCS files, to pre-build a branch map,
before getting the actual data.

Just a thought, though. Bob is closest to the problem and will no
doubt be able to form a better judgement soon.

> PS. I might sign up to write the Clearcase->SVN translator. ;-)

Yay! :-)

-Karl
Received on Sat Oct 21 14:36:08 2006