Question

My normal git-svn workflow is to do my work on a local branch, then merge to master and git svn dcommit from there to record my commits onto the svn trunk.

However, in my current local branch (foo) I’m realizing that this work is going to be around for a while before I feel comfortable committing it to the trunk, and other developers might be involved in it before then. I would like to “back it” by a svn branch, so that my work is on the server.

I’ve created a new svn branch (svnFoo) from the current trunk and I basically want to “move” foo so that when I svn dcommit from it all of its commits get recorded on svnFoo instead of trunk.

What is the best way to do this?

Answer 1

git rebase is your friend here. Assuming you created the local foo branch from the local master branch, and you’ve done a recent git svn fetch so your local Git repository knows about the remote svnFoo branch, the magic command you want is this:

git rebase --onto remotes/svnFoo $(git merge-base master foo) foo

This will find the commit where you branched foo from master, and replay all the commits from there to the head of the foo branch on top of the svnFoo branch. Subsequent git svn dcommits will commit onto the Subversion svnFoo branch rather than the trunk.