During the migration from Subversion to Git, it’s common for tags to be misinterpreted as branches, which can create confusion and clutter in your Git repository. Thankfully, there’s a straightforward solution to this problem, as shared by Alexis Midon.
To illustrate, let’s assume you’ve initialized your Git repository from a Subversion repository using standard procedures:
$ mkdir rails
$ cd rails
$ git svn init -t tags -b branches -T trunk <path to svn repo>
Initialized empty Git repository in .git/
$ git svn fetch
Now, to rectify the issue of tag branches appearing as actual branches, Alexis devised a simple script:
$ git-for-each-ref refs/remotes/origin/tags | cut -d / -f 5- |
while read ref
do
git tag -a "$ref" -m"Say farewell to SVN" "refs/remotes/origin/tags/$ref"
git push origin ":refs/heads/tags/$ref"
git push origin tag "$ref"
done
This script iterates over each tag branch fetched from Subversion, converts it into a proper Git tag, and ensures that it’s pushed to the remote repository correctly.
By executing this script, you can tidy up your repository and ensure that tags are represented accurately in Git. If you’ve developed any useful scripts or techniques for migrating from other version control systems to Git, feel free to share them with us in the comments or submit your own tip!