Question

I have cloned an existing SVN project via git svn clone with no problem so far, but in the mean time I have created a branch in Git only (not in SVN) and now i would like to synchronize this branch back to an SVN branch (not the trunk).

I have created the branch a little time ago. Is it possible to get back the information stored on that Git branch into SVN?

Answer 1

You can create a new branch in Subversion using git svn branch. You might want to look at the example in this answer:

• Git-svn: create & push a new branch/tag?

In particular, a good tip in the linked tutorial is to use the --dry-run option to svn dcommit to check that when you run the command for real, it’ll be pushing to the right branch.

The Pro Git book has a clearer description of how git svn dcommit decides which svn branch to update. It sounds to me as if you should:

• Create a new svn branch using git svn branch new-experiment
• Create a local branch to track remotes/new-experiment with git checkout --track -b new-experiment remotes/new-experiment

• Rebase the changes from your old git topic branch (let’s suppose it’s called experiment) onto new-experiment:

   git checkout experiment
   git branch original-experiment
   git rebase new-experiment
   git checkout new-experiment
   git merge experiment
  

• Try git svn dcommit --dry-run to check that the right subversion branch will be updated
• If so, do git svn dcommit