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GITCVS-MIGRATION(7)		   Git Manual		     GITCVS-MIGRATION(7)

NAME
     gitcvs-migration - Git for CVS users

SYNOPSIS
     git cvsimport *

DESCRIPTION
     Git  differs from CVS in that every working tree contains a repository with
     a full copy of the project history, and no repository  is	inherently  more
     important	than any other. However, you can emulate the CVS model by desig-
     nating a single shared repository which people can synchronize  with;  this
     document explains how to do that.

     Some  basic familiarity with Git is required. Having gone through gittutor-
     ial(7) and gitglossary(7) should be sufficient.

DEVELOPING AGAINST A SHARED REPOSITORY
     Suppose a shared repository is set up in /pub/repo.git on the host foo.com.
     Then as an individual committer you can clone the	shared	repository  over
     ssh with:

	 $ git clone foo.com:/pub/repo.git/ my-project
	 $ cd my-project

     and hack away. The equivalent of cvs update is

	 $ git pull origin

     which merges in any work that others might have done since the clone opera-
     tion.  If	there  are uncommitted changes in your working tree, commit them
     first before running git pull.

	 Note

	 The pull command knows where to get updates  from  because  of  certain
	 configuration	variables  that were set by the first git clone command;
	 see the subcommand list in git-config(1) for details.

     You can update the shared repository with your changes by first  committing
     your changes, and then using the git push command:

	 $ git push origin master

     to  "push"  those commits to the shared repository. If someone else has up-
     dated the repository more recently, git push, like cvs  commit,  will  com-
     plain,  in  which case you must pull any changes before attempting the push
     again.

     In the git push command above we specify the name of the remote  branch  to
     update  (master).	If  we	leave  that  out,  git	push tries to update any
     branches in the remote repository that have the same name as  a  branch  in
     the local repository. So the last push can be done with either of:

	 $ git push origin
	 $ git push foo.com:/pub/project.git/

     as long as the shared repository does not have any branches other than mas-
     ter.

SETTING UP A SHARED REPOSITORY
     We  assume you have already created a Git repository for your project, pos-
     sibly created from scratch or from a tarball (see gittutorial(7)),  or  im-
     ported from an already existing CVS repository (see the next section).

     Assume  your existing repo is at /home/alice/myproject. Create a new "bare"
     repository (a repository without a working tree)  and  fetch  your  project
     into it:

	 $ mkdir /pub/my-repo.git
	 $ cd /pub/my-repo.git
	 $ git --bare init --shared
	 $ git --bare fetch /home/alice/myproject master:master

     Next, give every team member read/write access to this repository. One easy
     way  to  do  this is to give all the team members ssh access to the machine
     where the repository is hosted. If you don't want to give them a full shell
     on the machine, there is a restricted shell which only allows users  to  do
     Git pushes and pulls; see git-shell(1).

     Put  all the committers in the same group, and make the repository writable
     by that group:

	 $ chgrp -R $group /pub/my-repo.git

     Make sure committers have a umask of at most 027, so that	the  directories
     they create are writable and searchable by other group members.

IMPORTING A CVS ARCHIVE
	 Note

	 These	instructions  use the git-cvsimport script which ships with git,
	 but other importers may provide better results. See the  note	in  git-
	 cvsimport(1) for other options.

     First,  install  version 2.1 or higher of cvsps from https://github.com/an-
     dreyvit/cvsps and make sure it is in your path. Then cd to  a  checked  out
     CVS  working  directory  of  the project you are interested in and run git-
     cvsimport(1):

	 $ git cvsimport -C <destination> <module>

     This puts a Git archive of the named CVS module in the directory  <destina-
     tion>, which will be created if necessary.

     The  import  checks  out  from CVS every revision of every file. Reportedly
     cvsimport	can  average  some  twenty  revisions  per  second,  so  for   a
     medium-sized  project  this  should not take more than a couple of minutes.
     Larger projects or remote repositories may take longer.

     The main trunk is stored in the Git branch named origin, and additional CVS
     branches are stored in Git branches with the same names.  The  most  recent
     version of the main trunk is also left checked out on the master branch, so
     you can start adding your own changes right away.

     The import is incremental, so if you call it again next month it will fetch
     any  CVS updates that have been made in the meantime. For this to work, you
     must not modify the imported branches; instead,  create  new  branches  for
     your own changes, and merge in the imported branches as necessary.

     If  you want a shared repository, you will need to make a bare clone of the
     imported directory, as described above. Then treat the  imported  directory
     as another development clone for purposes of merging incremental imports.

ADVANCED SHARED REPOSITORY MANAGEMENT
     Git  allows  you  to  specify  scripts  called "hooks" to be run at certain
     points. You can use these, for example, to send all commits to  the  shared
     repository to a mailing list. See githooks(5).

     You  can enforce finer grained permissions using update hooks. See Control-
     ling access to branches using update hooks[1].

PROVIDING CVS ACCESS TO A GIT REPOSITORY
     It is also possible to provide true CVS access to a Git repository, so that
     developers can still use CVS; see git-cvsserver(1) for details.

ALTERNATIVE DEVELOPMENT MODELS
     CVS users are accustomed to giving a group of developers commit access to a
     common repository. As we've seen, this is also possible with Git.	However,
     the  distributed nature of Git allows other development models, and you may
     want to first consider whether one of them might be a better fit  for  your
     project.

     For  example, you can choose a single person to maintain the project's pri-
     mary public repository. Other developers then  clone  this  repository  and
     each  work  in  their  own  clone.  When they have a series of changes that
     they're happy with, they ask the maintainer to pull from  the  branch  con-
     taining  the  changes.  The maintainer reviews their changes and pulls them
     into the primary repository, which other developers pull from as  necessary
     to  stay  coordinated.  The Linux kernel and other projects use variants of
     this model.

     With a small group, developers may just  pull  changes  from  each  other's
     repositories without the need for a central maintainer.

SEE ALSO
     gittutorial(7),   gittutorial-2(7),   gitcore-tutorial(7),  gitglossary(7),
     giteveryday(7), The Git User's Manual[2]

GIT
     Part of the git(1) suite

NOTES
      1. Controlling access to branches using update hooks
	 git-htmldocs/howto/update-hook-example.html

      2. The Git User's Manual
	 git-htmldocs/user-manual.html

Git 2.54.0			   2026-04-19		     GITCVS-MIGRATION(7)

Want to link to this manual page? Use this URL:
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