| Version | 0.10.0dev |
| Branch | lp:bzr-fastimport |
| Home page | https://launchpad.net/bzr-fastimport |
| Owner | jelmer |
| GNU/Linux | Yes |
| Windows | Yes |
| Mac OS X | Yes |
FastImport Plugin
The fastimport plugin provides stream-based importing and exporting of data into and out of Bazaar. As well as enabling interchange between multiple VCS tools, fastimport/export can be useful for complex branch operations, e.g. partitioning off part of a code base in order to Open Source it.
The normal import recipe is:
Homebzr fast-export-from-xxx SOURCE project.fi
bzr fast-import project.fi project.bzr
If fast-export-from-xxx doesn’t exist yet for the tool you’re importing from, the alternative recipe is:
front-end > project.fi
bzr fast-import project.fi project.bzr
In either case, if you wish to save disk space, project.fi can be compressed to gzip format after it is generated like this:
(generate project.fi)
gzip project.fi
bzr fast-import project.fi.gz project.bzr
The list of known front-ends and their status is documented on http://bazaar-vcs.org/BzrFastImport/FrontEnds. The fast-export-from-xxx commands provide simplified access to these so that the majority of users can generate a fast-import dump file without needing to study up on all the options - and the best combination of them to use - for the front-end relevant to them. In some cases, a fast-export-from-xxx wrapper will require that certain dependencies are installed so it checks for these before starting. A wrapper may also provide a limited set of options. See the online help for the individual commands for details:
bzr help fast-export-from-cvs
bzr help fast-export-from-darcs
bzr help fast-export-from-hg
bzr help fast-export-from-git
bzr help fast-export-from-mtn
bzr help fast-export-from-p4
bzr help fast-export-from-svn
Once a fast-import dump file is created, it can be imported into a Bazaar repository using the fast-import command. If required, you can manipulate the stream first using the fast-import-filter command. This is useful for creating a repository with just part of a project or for removing large old binaries (say) from history that are no longer valuable to retain. For further details on importing, manipulating and reporting on fast-import streams, see the online help for the commands:
bzr help fast-import
bzr help fast-import-filter
bzr help fast-import-info
bzr help fast-import-query
Finally, you may wish to generate a fast-import dump file from a Bazaar repository. The fast-export command is provided for that purpose.
To report bugs or publish enhancements, visit the bzr-fastimport project page on Launchpad, https://launchpad.net/bzr-fastimport.
Purpose
Generate a fast-import stream from a Bazaar branch.
Usage
bzr fast-export SOURCE [DESTINATION]
Options
| -v, --verbose | Display more information. |
| --plain | Exclude metadata to maximise interoperability. |
| --marks=FILE | Import marks from and export marks to file. |
| -h, --help | Show help message. |
| -q, --quiet | Only display errors and warnings. |
| --import-marks=FILE | |
| Import marks from file. | |
| --checkpoint=N | Checkpoint every N revisions (default=10000). |
| -b FILE, --git-branch=FILE | |
| Name of the git branch to create (default=master). | |
| --usage | Show usage message and options. |
| --export-marks=FILE | |
| Export marks to file. | |
| -r ARG, --revision=ARG | |
| See “help revisionspec” for details. | |
Description
This program generates a stream from a Bazaar branch in fast-import format used by tools such as bzr fast-import, git-fast-import and hg-fast-import.
If no destination is given or the destination is ‘-‘, standard output is used. Otherwise, the destination is the name of a file. If the destination ends in ‘.gz’, the output will be compressed into gzip format.
Round-tripping
Recent versions of the fast-import specification support features that allow effective round-tripping of many Bazaar branches. As such, fast-exporting a branch and fast-importing the data produced will create a new repository with equivalent history, i.e. “bzr log -v -p –include-merges –forward” on the old branch and new branch should produce similar, if not identical, results.
Note
Be aware that the new repository may appear to have similar history but internally it is quite different with new revision-ids and file-ids assigned. As a consequence, the ability to easily merge with branches based on the old repository is lost. Depending on your reasons for producing a new repository, this may or may not be an issue.
Interoperability
fast-export can use the following “extended features” to produce a richer data stream:
To disable these features and produce output acceptable to git 1.6, use the –plain option. To enable these features, use –no-plain. Currently, –plain is the default but that will change in the near future once the feature names and definitions are formally agreed to by the broader fast-import developer community.
Examples
To produce data destined for import into Bazaar:
bzr fast-export --no-plain my-bzr-branch my.fi.gz
To produce data destined for Git 1.6:
bzr fast-export --plain my-bzr-branch my.fi
To import several unmerged but related branches into the same repository, use the –{export,import}-marks options, and specify a name for the git branch like this:
bzr fast-export --export-marks=marks.bzr project.dev |
GIT_DIR=project/.git git-fast-import --export-marks=marks.git
bzr fast-export --import-marks=marks.bzr -b other project.other |
GIT_DIR=project/.git git-fast-import --import-marks=marks.git
If you get a “Missing space after source” error from git-fast-import, see the top of the commands.py module for a work-around.
See also
fast-import, fast-import-filter
Purpose
Generate a fast-import file from a CVS repository.
Usage
bzr fast-export-from-cvs SOURCE DESTINATION
Options
| --sort=PATH | GNU sort program location if not on the path. |
| --trunk-only | Export just the trunk, ignoring tags and branches. |
| -v, --verbose | Display more information. |
| --encoding=CODEC | |
| Encoding used for filenames, commit messages and author names if not ascii. | |
| -q, --quiet | Only display errors and warnings. |
| --usage | Show usage message and options. |
| -h, --help | Show help message. |
Description
Destination is a dump file, typically named xxx.fi where xxx is the name of the project. If ‘-‘ is given, standard output is used.
cvs2svn 2.3 or later must be installed as its cvs2bzr script is used under the covers to do the export.
The source must be the path on your filesystem to the part of the repository you wish to convert. i.e. either that path or a parent directory must contain a CVSROOT subdirectory. The path may point to either the top of a repository or to a path within it. In the latter case, only that project within the repository will be converted.
Note
Remote access to the repository is not sufficient - the path must point into a copy of the repository itself. See http://cvs2svn.tigris.org/faq.html#repoaccess for instructions on how to clone a remote CVS repository locally.
By default, the trunk, branches and tags are all exported. If you only want the trunk, use the –trunk-only option.
By default, filenames, log messages and author names are expected to be encoded in ascii. Use the –encoding option to specify an alternative. If multiple encodings are used, specify the option multiple times. For a list of valid encoding names, see http://docs.python.org/lib/standard-encodings.html.
Windows users need to install GNU sort and use the –sort option to specify its location. GNU sort can be downloaded from http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/.
See also
fast-import, fast-import-filter
Purpose
Generate a fast-import file from a Darcs repository.
Usage
bzr fast-export-from-darcs SOURCE DESTINATION
Options
| --usage | Show usage message and options. |
| --encoding=CODEC | |
| Encoding used for commit messages if not utf-8. | |
| -v, --verbose | Display more information. |
| -q, --quiet | Only display errors and warnings. |
| -h, --help | Show help message. |
Description
Destination is a dump file, typically named xxx.fi where xxx is the name of the project. If ‘-‘ is given, standard output is used.
Darcs 2.2 or later must be installed as various subcommands are used to access the source repository. The source may be a network URL but using a local URL is recommended for performance reasons.
See also
fast-import, fast-import-filter
Purpose
Generate a fast-import file from a Git repository.
Usage
bzr fast-export-from-git SOURCE DESTINATION
Options
| --usage | Show usage message and options. |
| -v, --verbose | Display more information. |
| -q, --quiet | Only display errors and warnings. |
| -h, --help | Show help message. |
Description
Destination is a dump file, typically named xxx.fi where xxx is the name of the project. If ‘-‘ is given, standard output is used.
Git 1.6 or later must be installed as the git fast-export subcommand is used under the covers to generate the stream. The source must be a local directory.
Note
Earlier versions of Git may also work fine but are likely to receive less active support if problems arise.
See also
fast-import, fast-import-filter
Purpose
Generate a fast-import file from a Mercurial repository.
Usage
bzr fast-export-from-hg SOURCE DESTINATION
Options
| --usage | Show usage message and options. |
| -v, --verbose | Display more information. |
| -q, --quiet | Only display errors and warnings. |
| -h, --help | Show help message. |
Description
Destination is a dump file, typically named xxx.fi where xxx is the name of the project. If ‘-‘ is given, standard output is used.
Mercurial 1.2 or later must be installed as its libraries are used to access the source repository. Given the APIs currently used, the source repository must be a local file, not a network URL.
See also
fast-import, fast-import-filter
Purpose
Generate a fast-import file from a Monotone repository.
Usage
bzr fast-export-from-mtn SOURCE DESTINATION
Options
| --usage | Show usage message and options. |
| -v, --verbose | Display more information. |
| -q, --quiet | Only display errors and warnings. |
| -h, --help | Show help message. |
Description
Destination is a dump file, typically named xxx.fi where xxx is the name of the project. If ‘-‘ is given, standard output is used.
Monotone 0.43 or later must be installed as the mtn git_export subcommand is used under the covers to generate the stream. The source must be a local directory.
See also
fast-import, fast-import-filter
Purpose
Generate a fast-import file from a Perforce repository.
Usage
bzr fast-export-from-p4 SOURCE DESTINATION
Options
| --usage | Show usage message and options. |
| -v, --verbose | Display more information. |
| -q, --quiet | Only display errors and warnings. |
| -h, --help | Show help message. |
Description
Source is a Perforce depot path, e.g., //depot/project
Destination is a dump file, typically named xxx.fi where xxx is the name of the project. If ‘-‘ is given, standard output is used.
bzrp4 must be installed as its p4_fast_export.py module is used under the covers to do the export. bzrp4 can be downloaded from https://launchpad.net/bzrp4/.
The P4PORT environment variable must be set, and you must be logged into the Perforce server.
By default, only the HEAD changelist is exported. To export all changelists, append '@all‘ to the source. To export a revision range, append a comma-delimited pair of changelist numbers to the source, e.g., ‘100,200’.
See also
fast-import, fast-import-filter
Purpose
Generate a fast-import file from a Subversion repository.
Usage
bzr fast-export-from-svn SOURCE DESTINATION
Options
| --tags-path=STR | |
| Path in repo to /tags. | |
| -v, --verbose | Display more information. |
| -q, --quiet | Only display errors and warnings. |
| --trunk-path=STR | |
| Path in repo to /trunk. May be regex:/cvs/(trunk)/proj1/(.*) in which case the first group is used as the branch name and the second group is used to match files. | |
| --usage | Show usage message and options. |
| --branches-path=STR | |
| Path in repo to /branches. | |
| -h, --help | Show help message. |
Description
Destination is a dump file, typically named xxx.fi where xxx is the name of the project. If ‘-‘ is given, standard output is used.
Python-Subversion (Python bindings to the Subversion APIs) 1.4 or later must be installed as this library is used to access the source repository. The source may be a network URL but using a local URL is recommended for performance reasons.
See also
fast-import, fast-import-filter
Purpose
Backend for fast Bazaar data importers.
Usage
bzr fast-import SOURCE [DESTINATION]
Options
| --info=ARG | Path to file containing caching hints. |
| --count=ARG | Import this many revisions then exit. |
| -v, --verbose | Display more information. |
| --import-marks=ARG | |
| Import marks from file. | |
| --format=ARG | Specify a format for the created repository. See “bzr help formats” for details. |
| -q, --quiet | Only display errors and warnings. |
| --trees | Update all working trees, not just trunk’s. |
| --checkpoint=ARG | |
| Checkpoint automatically every N revisions. The default is 10000. | |
| --user-map=ARG | Path to file containing a map of user-ids. |
| --autopack=ARG | Pack every N checkpoints. The default is 4. |
| --usage | Show usage message and options. |
| --inv-cache=ARG | |
| Number of inventories to cache. | |
| --export-marks=ARG | |
| Export marks to file. | |
| -h, --help | Show help message. |
| --classic | Use the original algorithm (mutable inventories). |
| --default | Use the preferred algorithm (inventory deltas). |
| --experimental | Enable experimental features. |
Description
This command reads a mixed command/data stream and creates branches in a Bazaar repository accordingly. The preferred recipe is:
bzr fast-import project.fi project.bzr
Numerous commands are provided for generating a fast-import file to use as input. These are named fast-export-from-xxx where xxx is one of cvs, darcs, git, hg, mtn, p4 or svn. To specify standard input as the input stream, use a source name of ‘-‘ (instead of project.fi). If the source name ends in ‘.gz’, it is assumed to be compressed in gzip format.
project.bzr will be created if it doesn’t exist. If it exists already, it should be empty or be an existing Bazaar repository or branch. If not specified, the current directory is assumed.
fast-import will intelligently select the format to use when creating a repository or branch. If you are running Bazaar 1.17 up to Bazaar 2.0, the default format for Bazaar 2.x (“2a”) is used. Otherwise, the current default format (“pack-0.92” for Bazaar 1.x) is used. If you wish to specify a custom format, use the –format option.
Note
To maintain backwards compatibility, fast-import lets you create the target repository or standalone branch yourself. It is recommended though that you let fast-import create these for you instead.
Branch mapping rules
Git reference names are mapped to Bazaar branch names as follows:
Branch creation rules
When a shared repository is created or found at the destination, branches are created inside it. In the simple case of a single branch (refs/heads/master) inside the input file, the branch is project.bzr/trunk.
When a standalone branch is found at the destination, the trunk is imported there and warnings are output about any other branches found in the input file.
When a branch in a shared repository is found at the destination, that branch is made the trunk and other branches, if any, are created in sister directories.
Working tree updates
The working tree is generated for the trunk branch. If multiple branches are created, a message is output on completion explaining how to create the working trees for other branches.
Custom exporters
The fast-export-from-xxx commands typically call more advanced xxx-fast-export scripts. You are welcome to use the advanced scripts if you prefer.
If you wish to write a custom exporter for your project, see http://bazaar-vcs.org/BzrFastImport for the detailed protocol specification. In many cases, exporters can be written quite quickly using whatever scripting/programming language you like.
User mapping
Some source repositories store just the user name while Bazaar prefers a full email address. You can adjust user-ids while importing by using the –user-map option. The argument is a text file with lines in the format:
old-id = new-id
Blank lines and lines beginning with # are ignored. If old-id has the special value ‘@’, then users without an email address will get one created by using the matching new-id as the domain, unless a more explicit address is given for them. For example, given the user-map of:
@ = example.com
bill = William Jones <bill@example.com>
then user-ids are mapped as follows:
maria => maria <maria@example.com>
bill => William Jones <bill@example.com>
Note
User mapping is supported by both the fast-import and fast-import-filter commands.
Blob tracking
As some exporters (like git-fast-export) reuse blob data across commits, fast-import makes two passes over the input file by default. In the first pass, it collects data about what blobs are used when, along with some other statistics (e.g. total number of commits). In the second pass, it generates the repository and branches.
Note
The initial pass isn’t done if the –info option is used to explicitly pass in information about the input stream. It also isn’t done if the source is standard input. In the latter case, memory consumption may be higher than otherwise because some blobs may be kept in memory longer than necessary.
Restarting an import
At checkpoints and on completion, the commit-id -> revision-id map is saved to a file called ‘fastimport-id-map’ in the control directory for the repository (e.g. .bzr/repository). If the import is interrupted or unexpectedly crashes, it can be started again and this file will be used to skip over already loaded revisions. As long as subsequent exports from the original source begin with exactly the same revisions, you can use this feature to maintain a mirror of a repository managed by a foreign tool. If and when Bazaar is used to manage the repository, this file can be safely deleted.
Examples
Import a Subversion repository into Bazaar:
bzr fast-export-from-svn /svn/repo/path project.fi
bzr fast-import project.fi project.bzr
Import a CVS repository into Bazaar:
bzr fast-export-from-cvs /cvs/repo/path project.fi
bzr fast-import project.fi project.bzr
Import a Git repository into Bazaar:
bzr fast-export-from-git /git/repo/path project.fi
bzr fast-import project.fi project.bzr
Import a Mercurial repository into Bazaar:
bzr fast-export-from-hg /hg/repo/path project.fi
bzr fast-import project.fi project.bzr
Import a Darcs repository into Bazaar:
bzr fast-export-from-darcs /darcs/repo/path project.fi
bzr fast-import project.fi project.bzr
See also
fast-export, fast-import-filter, fast-import-info
Purpose
Filter a fast-import stream to include/exclude files & directories.
Usage
bzr fast-import-filter [SOURCE]
Options
| -v, --verbose | Display more information. |
| -x ARG, --exclude_paths=ARG | |
| Exclude these paths from commits. | |
| -q, --quiet | Only display errors and warnings. |
| -i ARG, --include_paths=ARG | |
| Only include commits affecting these paths. Directories should have a trailing /. | |
| --usage | Show usage message and options. |
| --user-map=ARG | Path to file containing a map of user-ids. |
| -h, --help | Show help message. |
Description
This command is useful for splitting a subdirectory or bunch of files out from a project to create a new project complete with history for just those files. It can also be used to create a new project repository that removes all references to files that should not have been committed, e.g. security-related information (like passwords), commercially sensitive material, files with an incompatible license or large binary files like CD images.
To specify standard input as the input stream, use a source name of ‘-‘. If the source name ends in ‘.gz’, it is assumed to be compressed in gzip format.
File/directory filtering
This is supported by the -i and -x options. Excludes take precedence over includes.
When filtering out a subdirectory (or file), the new stream uses the subdirectory (or subdirectory containing the file) as the root. As fast-import doesn’t know in advance whether a path is a file or directory in the stream, you need to specify a trailing ‘/’ on directories passed to the –includes option. If multiple files or directories are given, the new root is the deepest common directory.
Note: If a path has been renamed, take care to specify the original path name, not the final name that it ends up with.
User mapping
Some source repositories store just the user name while Bazaar prefers a full email address. You can adjust user-ids by using the –user-map option. The argument is a text file with lines in the format:
old-id = new-id
Blank lines and lines beginning with # are ignored. If old-id has the special value ‘@’, then users without an email address will get one created by using the matching new-id as the domain, unless a more explicit address is given for them. For example, given the user-map of:
@ = example.com
bill = William Jones <bill@example.com>
then user-ids are mapped as follows:
maria => maria <maria@example.com>
bill => William Jones <bill@example.com>
Note
User mapping is supported by both the fast-import and fast-import-filter commands.
Examples
Create a new project from a library (note the trailing / on the directory name of the library):
front-end | bzr fast-import-filter -i lib/xxx/ > xxx.fi
bzr fast-import xxx.fi mylibrary.bzr
(lib/xxx/foo is now foo)
Create a new repository without a sensitive file:
front-end | bzr fast-import-filter -x missile-codes.txt > clean.fi
bzr fast-import clean.fi clean.bzr
See also
fast-import
Purpose
Output information about a fast-import stream.
Usage
bzr fast-import-info SOURCE
Options
| --usage | Show usage message and options. |
| -v, --verbose | Display more information. |
| -q, --quiet | Only display errors and warnings. |
| -h, --help | Show help message. |
Description
This command reads a fast-import stream and outputs statistics and interesting properties about what it finds. When run in verbose mode, the information is output as a configuration file that can be passed to fast-import to assist it in intelligently caching objects.
To specify standard input as the input stream, use a source name of ‘-‘. If the source name ends in ‘.gz’, it is assumed to be compressed in gzip format.
Examples
Display statistics about the import stream produced by front-end:
front-end | bzr fast-import-info -
Create a hints file for running fast-import on a large repository:
front-end | bzr fast-import-info -v - > front-end.cfg
See also
fast-import