reposurgeon

Tool for editing version-control repository history

`reposurgeon` enables risky operations that version-control systems don't want to let you do, such as (a) editing past comments and metadata, (b) excising commits, (c) coalescing commits, and (d) removing files and subtrees from repo history. The original motivation for `reposurgeon` was to clean up artifacts created by repository conversions. `reposurgeon` is also useful for scripting very high-quality conversions from Subversion. It is better than `git-svn` at tag lifting, automatically cleaning up `cvs2svn` conversion artifacts, dealing with nonstandard repository layouts, recognizing branch merges, handling mixed-branch commits, and generally at coping with Subversion's many odd corner cases. Normally Subversion repos should be analyzed at a rate of upwards of ten thousand commits per minute. `repodiffer` is a program that reports differences between repository histories. It uses a `diff(1)`-like algorithm to identify spans of identical revisions, and to pick out revisions that have been changed or deleted or inserted. It may be useful for comparing the output of different repository-conversion tools in detail. Another auxiliary program, `repotool`, performs various useful operations such as checkouts and tag listing in a VCS-independent manner. Yet another, `repomapper`, assists in automatically preparing contributor maps of CVS and SVN repositories. The `repocutter` program is available for some specialized operations on Subversion dumpfiles; it may be useful in extracting portions of particularly gnarly Subversion repositories for conversion witth reposurgeon. This distribution supports a generic conversion workflow using these tools, and includes the DVCS Migration Guide that describes how to use it.