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FreeBSD Doc Committer Transition Guide

This document is designed to walk people through the conversion process from Subversion to Git, written from the doc committer's point of view. This document is a living document, so please don't hesitate to send improvements, or even ask for areas to be explained more / better / at all.

Old vs New URL translation table

Before we get started, here's a handy cheat sheet for old to new URLs.

SVN infra -> Git infra map

Item SVN Git
Web-based repository browser https://svnweb.freebsd.org https://cgit.freebsd.org
Distributed mirrors for anonymous readonly checkout/clone https://svn.freebsd.org svn://svn.freebsd.org https://git.freebsd.org ssh://anongit@git.freebsd.org
Read/write Repository for committers (*) svn+ssh://(svn)repo.freebsd.org ssh://git@(git)repo.freebsd.org

(*) Before all repositories in SVN have been migrated, the repo.freebsd.org will be pointing to one of: - svnrepo.freebsd.org - gitrepo.freebsd.org

Please use the hostname that explicitly includes the VCS name to access the right repositories during the migration. repo.freebsd.org will be the canonical FreeBSD Git repository for the committers after all the repositories migrated to Git.

Git basics

There are many primers on how to use Git on the web. There's a lot of them (google "Git primer"). This one comes up first, and is generally good. https://danielmiessler.com/study/git/ and https://gist.github.com/williewillus/068e9a8543de3a7ef80adb2938657b6b are good overviews. The Git book is also complete, but much longer https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2. There is also this website https://ohshitgit.com/ for common traps and pitfalls of Git, in case you need guidance to fix things up.

This document will assume that you've read through it and will try not to belabor the basics (though it will cover them briefly).

Migrating from a Subversion tree

This section will cover a couple of common scenarios for migrating from using the FreeBSD Subversion repo to the FreeBSD docs repo. The FreeBSD Git conversion is still in beta status, so some minor things may change between this and going into production.

Before you git started, you'll need a copy of Git. Any Git will do, though the latest ones are always recommended. Either build it from ports, or install it using pkg (though some folks might use su or doas instead of sudo):

% sudo pkg install git

No staged changes migration

If you have no changes pending, the migration is straight forward. In this, you abandon the Subversion tree and clone the Git repo. It's likely best to retain your subversion tree, in case there's something you've forgotten about there. First, let's clone a repo:

% mkdir git-docs
% cd git-docs
% git clone -o freebsd --config remote.freebsd.fetch='+refs/notes/*:refs/notes/*' https://git.freebsd.org/doc.git freebsd-doc

will create a clone of the FreeBSD doc repo into a subdirectory called freebsd-doc and include the 'notes' about the revisions. I selected that name because it is also the name we publish at github. The current plan for GitHub mirroring is to mirror to https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-doc.git as well, but it is currently frozen as the point of the transition (notice that the main branch is still "master" instead of "main") while some logistics are being worked out. We will also mirror the repo to gitlab at https://gitlab.com/FreeBSD/doc.git . Its transition plan is also being finalized.

It's useful to have the old Subversion revisions. This data is stored using Git notes, but Git doesn't fetch those by default. The --config and the argument above changed the default to fetch the notes. If you've cloned the repo without this, or wish to add notes to an previously clone repository, use the following commands:

% git config --add remote.freebsd.fetch "+refs/notes/*:refs/notes/*"
% git fetch freebsd

At this point you have the docs checked out into a Git tree, ready to do other things.

But I have changes that I've not committed

If you are migrating from a tree that has changes you've not yet committed to FreeBSD, you'll need to follow the steps from the previous section first, and then follow these.

% cd path-to-svn-checkout-tree
% svn diff > /tmp/docs.diff
% cd git-docs/freebsd-doc
% git checkout -b working

This will create a diff of your current changes. The last command creates a branch called working though you can call it whatever you want.

% git apply /tmp/docs.diff

this will apply all your pending changes to the working tree. This doesn't commit the change, so you'll need to make this permanent:

% git commit

The last command will commit these changes to the branch. The editor will prompt you for a commit message. Enter one as if you were committing to FreeBSD.

At this point, your work is preserved, and in the Git repo.

Keeping current

So, time passes. It's time now to update the tree for the latest changes upstream. When you checkout main make sure that you have no diffs. It's a lot easier to commit those to a branch (or use git stash) before doing the following.

If you are used to git pull, I would strongly recommend using the --ff-only option, and further setting it as the default option.

% git config --global pull.ff only

% cd freebsd-doc
% git checkout main
% git pull (--ff-only)

There is a common trap, that the combination command git pull will try to perform a merge, which would sometimes creates a merge commit sha that didn't exist before. This can be harder to recover from.

The longer form is also recommended.

% cd freebsd-doc
% git checkout main
% git fetch freebsd
% git merge --ff-only freebsd/main

These commands reset your tree to the main branch, and then update it from where you pulled the tree from originally. It's important to switch to main before doing this so it moves forward. Now, it's time to move the changes forward:

% git rebase -i main working

This will bring up an interactive screen to change the defaults. For now, just exit the editor. Everything should just apply. If not, then you'll need to resolve the diffs. https://docs.github.com/en/free-pro-team@latest/github/using-git/resolving-merge-conflicts-after-a-git-rebase can help you navigate this process.

Time to push changes upstream

The below command merges the 'working' branch into the upstream main line. It's important that you curate your changes to be just like you want them in the FreeBSD doc repo before doing this.

% git push freebsd working:main

If your push is rejected due to losing a commit race, rebase your branch before trying again:

% git checkout working
% git fetch freebsd
% git rebase freebsd/main
% git push freebsd working:main

Finding the Subversion Revision

You'll need to make sure that you've fetched the notes (see the No staged changes migration section above for details. Once you have these, notes will show up in the git log command like so:

commit 77788b7b18c1569e368e845cfbd4739329a2b76f
Author: phk <phk@FreeBSD.org>
Date:   Mon Nov 23 09:00:37 2020 +0000

    Update my GPG key

Notes:
    svn path=/head/; revision=54705

If you have a specific version in mind, you can use this construct:

% git log --grep revision=54700
commit 9a9960bfb7e8ff9fa7fe04eb488eabb1fd06814b
Author: dbaio <dbaio@FreeBSD.org>
Date:   Sun Nov 22 20:57:38 2020 +0000

    pt_BR/articles/freebsd-releng: Sync with en_US r54689

    Approved by:    ebrandi (doc)
    Obtained from:  https://translate-dev.freebsd.org
    Differential Revision:  https://reviews.freebsd.org/D27315

Notes:
    svn path=/head/; revision=54700
%

to find the specific revision. The hex number after 'commit' is the hash you can use to refer to this commit.

Migrating from GitHub fork

Note: as of this writing, the https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-doc repo ends with the last subversion commit. In the near future, we'll start mirroring the official repo there. We'll likely retain the master branch that's there now and just push to main and all the historical branches...

When migrating branches from a github fork from the old github mirror to the official repo, the process is straight forward. This assumes that you have a origin upstream pointing to github, adjust if necessary. This also assumes a clean tree before starting...

  1. Add the new freebsd source of truth:
% git remote add freebsd https://git.freebsd.org/doc.git
% git fetch freebsd
% git checkout freebsd/main
  1. Rebase all your WIP branches. For each branch FOO, do the following after fetching the freebsd sources and creating a local main reference with the above checkout:
% git rebase -i origin/master FOO --onto main

And you'll now be tracking the official source of truth. You can then follow the Keeping Current section above to stay up to date.

If you need to then commit work to FreeBSD, you can do so following the Time to push changes upstream instructions. You'll need to do the following once to update the push URL if you are a FreeBSD committer:

% git remote set-url --push freebsd ssh://git@gitrepo.freebsd.org/doc.git
(note that gitrepo.freebsd.org will be change to repo.freebsd.org in the future.)

You will also need to add freebsd as the location to push to. The author recommends that your upstream github repo remain the default push location so that you only push things into FreeBSD you intend to by making it explicit.