I'm trying to migrate an old SVN repository over to GIT using svn2git (on my Windows box) using the following command:
svn2git https://my/svn/url --verbose --authors authors.txt
and things were running okay until I hit the following error:
fatal: Not a valid object name refs/remotes/svn/VS2010 Port
cat-file commit refs/remotes/svn/VS2010 Port: command returned error: 128
It seems that someone (ages back) created a branch with a space in the name and this is causing havoc on the process. Running git branch -a shows the branch in question:
remotes/svn/VS2010%20Port
I did some searching around Google and StackOverflow and came across a few posts including this one (although it is referring to tags).
First I attempted the suggestion of removing the branch with git branch -r -d svn/VS2010%20Port (retaining this branch is not important) and then I reran my svn2git command. It begins running and eventually fails with the same error. I also tried removing the branch and adding the flag --exclude '.*VS2010.*' to my svn2git command but this didn't help:
svn2git https://my/svn/url --verbose --authors authors.txt --exclude '.*VS2010.*'
Next, I tried the other suggestion of running the mv command to move the file/directory with the %20 in the name to one with an actual space:
mv VS2010%20Port VS2010\ Port
Since my issue isn't with tags I wasn't 100% where to run this but I tried in the following locations:
When I ran the svn2git command afterwards I eventually got the same issue.
Finally I found this post which is specifically about branches but the solution was to edit the packed-refs file and replace %20 with spaces. Although I didn't see the VS2010%20Port branch listed here so I could not go through with this solution.
Does anyone have any suggestions on something I could try or something I may have missed?
Update:
I was able to get some progress happen by adding the --ignore-refs flag with a regex that would match the VS2010 Port string. Its a large repository so it took a very long time but eventually it seemed to finish. Unfortunately, I saw no files in the directory (just the .git directory) so I'm assuming something went wrong. I decided to take a step back and try again fresh with the git svn clone command and this time I provided the --ignore-refs and --ignore-paths flags from the start. Hopefully I'll get better results this time.
Just to put an end to this question, I was able to get this process working thanks to the various comments and suggestions. In the end I moved away from svn2git and I was able to get my repository migrated (to a point that I'm satisfied with) using git svn clone along with the --ignore-refs option. I'm not exactly clear why svn2git or git svn init followed by git svn fetch did not work but in the end I got.