Help: convert

hg convert [OPTION]... SOURCE [DEST [REVMAP]]

convert a foreign SCM repository to a Mercurial one.

Accepted source formats [identifiers]:

  • Mercurial [hg]
  • CVS [cvs]
  • Darcs [darcs]
  • git [git]
  • Subversion [svn]
  • Monotone [mtn]
  • GNU Arch [gnuarch]
  • Bazaar [bzr]
  • Perforce [p4]

Accepted destination formats [identifiers]:

  • Mercurial [hg]
  • Subversion [svn] (history on branches is not preserved)

If no revision is given, all revisions will be converted. Otherwise, convert will only import up to the named revision (given in a format understood by the source).

If no destination directory name is specified, it defaults to the basename of the source with "-hg" appended. If the destination repository doesn't exist, it will be created.

By default, all sources except Mercurial will use --branchsort. Mercurial uses --sourcesort to preserve original revision numbers order. Sort modes have the following effects:

--branchsort
convert from parent to child revision when possible, which means branches are usually converted one after the other. It generates more compact repositories.
--datesort
sort revisions by date. Converted repositories have good-looking changelogs but are often an order of magnitude larger than the same ones generated by --branchsort.
--sourcesort
try to preserve source revisions order, only supported by Mercurial sources.
--closesort
try to move closed revisions as close as possible to parent branches, only supported by Mercurial sources.

If "REVMAP" isn't given, it will be put in a default location ("<dest>/.hg/shamap" by default). The "REVMAP" is a simple text file that maps each source commit ID to the destination ID for that revision, like so:

<source ID> <destination ID>

If the file doesn't exist, it's automatically created. It's updated on each commit copied, so 'hg convert' can be interrupted and can be run repeatedly to copy new commits.

The authormap is a simple text file that maps each source commit author to a destination commit author. It is handy for source SCMs that use unix logins to identify authors (e.g.: CVS). One line per author mapping and the line format is:

source author = destination author

Empty lines and lines starting with a "#" are ignored.

The filemap is a file that allows filtering and remapping of files and directories. Each line can contain one of the following directives:

include path/to/file-or-dir
exclude path/to/file-or-dir
rename path/to/source path/to/destination

Comment lines start with "#". A specified path matches if it equals the full relative name of a file or one of its parent directories. The "include" or "exclude" directive with the longest matching path applies, so line order does not matter.

The "include" directive causes a file, or all files under a directory, to be included in the destination repository. The default if there are no "include" statements is to include everything. If there are any "include" statements, nothing else is included. The "exclude" directive causes files or directories to be omitted. The "rename" directive renames a file or directory if it is converted. To rename from a subdirectory into the root of the repository, use "." as the path to rename to.

"--full" will make sure the converted changesets contain exactly the right files with the right content. It will make a full conversion of all files, not just the ones that have changed. Files that already are correct will not be changed. This can be used to apply filemap changes when converting incrementally. This is currently only supported for Mercurial and Subversion.

The splicemap is a file that allows insertion of synthetic history, letting you specify the parents of a revision. This is useful if you want to e.g. give a Subversion merge two parents, or graft two disconnected series of history together. Each entry contains a key, followed by a space, followed by one or two comma-separated values:

key parent1, parent2

The key is the revision ID in the source revision control system whose parents should be modified (same format as a key in .hg/shamap). The values are the revision IDs (in either the source or destination revision control system) that should be used as the new parents for that node. For example, if you have merged "release-1.0" into "trunk", then you should specify the revision on "trunk" as the first parent and the one on the "release-1.0" branch as the second.

The branchmap is a file that allows you to rename a branch when it is being brought in from whatever external repository. When used in conjunction with a splicemap, it allows for a powerful combination to help fix even the most badly mismanaged repositories and turn them into nicely structured Mercurial repositories. The branchmap contains lines of the form:

original_branch_name new_branch_name

where "original_branch_name" is the name of the branch in the source repository, and "new_branch_name" is the name of the branch is the destination repository. No whitespace is allowed in the new branch name. This can be used to (for instance) move code in one repository from "default" to a named branch.

Mercurial Source

The Mercurial source recognizes the following configuration options, which you can set on the command line with "--config":

convert.hg.ignoreerrors
ignore integrity errors when reading. Use it to fix Mercurial repositories with missing revlogs, by converting from and to Mercurial. Default is False.
convert.hg.saverev
store original revision ID in changeset (forces target IDs to change). It takes a boolean argument and defaults to False.
convert.hg.startrev
specify the initial Mercurial revision. The default is 0.
convert.hg.revs
revset specifying the source revisions to convert.

Bazaar Source

The following options can be used with "--config":

convert.bzr.saverev
whether to store the original Bazaar commit ID in the metadata of the destination commit. The default is True.

CVS Source

CVS source will use a sandbox (i.e. a checked-out copy) from CVS to indicate the starting point of what will be converted. Direct access to the repository files is not needed, unless of course the repository is ":local:". The conversion uses the top level directory in the sandbox to find the CVS repository, and then uses CVS rlog commands to find files to convert. This means that unless a filemap is given, all files under the starting directory will be converted, and that any directory reorganization in the CVS sandbox is ignored.

The following options can be used with "--config":

convert.cvsps.cache
Set to False to disable remote log caching, for testing and debugging purposes. Default is True.
convert.cvsps.fuzz
Specify the maximum time (in seconds) that is allowed between commits with identical user and log message in a single changeset. When very large files were checked in as part of a changeset then the default may not be long enough. The default is 60.
convert.cvsps.logencoding
Specify encoding name to be used for transcoding CVS log messages. Multiple encoding names can be specified as a list (see 'hg help config.Syntax'), but only the first acceptable encoding in the list is used per CVS log entries. This transcoding is executed before cvslog hook below.
convert.cvsps.mergeto
Specify a regular expression to which commit log messages are matched. If a match occurs, then the conversion process will insert a dummy revision merging the branch on which this log message occurs to the branch indicated in the regex. Default is "{{mergetobranch ([-\w]+)}}"
convert.cvsps.mergefrom
Specify a regular expression to which commit log messages are matched. If a match occurs, then the conversion process will add the most recent revision on the branch indicated in the regex as the second parent of the changeset. Default is "{{mergefrombranch ([-\w]+)}}"
convert.localtimezone
use local time (as determined by the TZ environment variable) for changeset date/times. The default is False (use UTC).
hooks.cvslog
Specify a Python function to be called at the end of gathering the CVS log. The function is passed a list with the log entries, and can modify the entries in-place, or add or delete them.
hooks.cvschangesets
Specify a Python function to be called after the changesets are calculated from the CVS log. The function is passed a list with the changeset entries, and can modify the changesets in-place, or add or delete them.

An additional "debugcvsps" Mercurial command allows the builtin changeset merging code to be run without doing a conversion. Its parameters and output are similar to that of cvsps 2.1. Please see the command help for more details.

Subversion Source

Subversion source detects classical trunk/branches/tags layouts. By default, the supplied "svn://repo/path/" source URL is converted as a single branch. If "svn://repo/path/trunk" exists it replaces the default branch. If "svn://repo/path/branches" exists, its subdirectories are listed as possible branches. If "svn://repo/path/tags" exists, it is looked for tags referencing converted branches. Default "trunk", "branches" and "tags" values can be overridden with following options. Set them to paths relative to the source URL, or leave them blank to disable auto detection.

The following options can be set with "--config":

convert.svn.branches
specify the directory containing branches. The default is "branches".
convert.svn.tags
specify the directory containing tags. The default is "tags".
convert.svn.trunk
specify the name of the trunk branch. The default is "trunk".
convert.localtimezone
use local time (as determined by the TZ environment variable) for changeset date/times. The default is False (use UTC).

Source history can be retrieved starting at a specific revision, instead of being integrally converted. Only single branch conversions are supported.

convert.svn.startrev
specify start Subversion revision number. The default is 0.

Git Source

The Git importer converts commits from all reachable branches (refs in refs/heads) and remotes (refs in refs/remotes) to Mercurial. Branches are converted to bookmarks with the same name, with the leading 'refs/heads' stripped. Git submodules are converted to Git subrepos in Mercurial.

The following options can be set with "--config":

convert.git.similarity
specify how similar files modified in a commit must be to be imported as renames or copies, as a percentage between "0" (disabled) and "100" (files must be identical). For example, "90" means that a delete/add pair will be imported as a rename if more than 90% of the file hasn't changed. The default is "50".
convert.git.findcopiesharder
while detecting copies, look at all files in the working copy instead of just changed ones. This is very expensive for large projects, and is only effective when "convert.git.similarity" is greater than 0. The default is False.
convert.git.renamelimit
perform rename and copy detection up to this many changed files in a commit. Increasing this will make rename and copy detection more accurate but will significantly slow down computation on large projects. The option is only relevant if "convert.git.similarity" is greater than 0. The default is "400".
convert.git.committeractions
list of actions to take when processing author and committer values.

Git commits have separate author (who wrote the commit) and committer (who applied the commit) fields. Not all destinations support separate author and committer fields (including Mercurial). This config option controls what to do with these author and committer fields during conversion.

A value of "messagedifferent" will append a "committer: ..." line to the commit message if the Git committer is different from the author. The prefix of that line can be specified using the syntax "messagedifferent=<prefix>". e.g. "messagedifferent=git-committer:". When a prefix is specified, a space will always be inserted between the prefix and the value.

"messagealways" behaves like "messagedifferent" except it will always result in a "committer: ..." line being appended to the commit message. This value is mutually exclusive with "messagedifferent".

"dropcommitter" will remove references to the committer. Only references to the author will remain. Actions that add references to the committer will have no effect when this is set.

"replaceauthor" will replace the value of the author field with the committer. Other actions that add references to the committer will still take effect when this is set.

The default is "messagedifferent".

convert.git.extrakeys
list of extra keys from commit metadata to copy to the destination. Some Git repositories store extra metadata in commits. By default, this non-default metadata will be lost during conversion. Setting this config option can retain that metadata. Some built-in keys such as "parent" and "branch" are not allowed to be copied.
convert.git.remoteprefix
remote refs are converted as bookmarks with "convert.git.remoteprefix" as a prefix followed by a /. The default is 'remote'.
convert.git.saverev
whether to store the original Git commit ID in the metadata of the destination commit. The default is True.
convert.git.skipsubmodules
does not convert root level .gitmodules files or files with 160000 mode indicating a submodule. Default is False.

Perforce Source

The Perforce (P4) importer can be given a p4 depot path or a client specification as source. It will convert all files in the source to a flat Mercurial repository, ignoring labels, branches and integrations. Note that when a depot path is given you then usually should specify a target directory, because otherwise the target may be named "...-hg".

The following options can be set with "--config":

convert.p4.encoding
specify the encoding to use when decoding standard output of the Perforce command line tool. The default is default system encoding.
convert.p4.startrev
specify initial Perforce revision (a Perforce changelist number).

Mercurial Destination

The Mercurial destination will recognize Mercurial subrepositories in the destination directory, and update the .hgsubstate file automatically if the destination subrepositories contain the <dest>/<sub>/.hg/shamap file. Converting a repository with subrepositories requires converting a single repository at a time, from the bottom up.

An example showing how to convert a repository with subrepositories:

# so convert knows the type when it sees a non empty destination
$ hg init converted
$ hg convert orig/sub1 converted/sub1
$ hg convert orig/sub2 converted/sub2
$ hg convert orig converted

The following options are supported:

convert.hg.clonebranches
dispatch source branches in separate clones. The default is False.
convert.hg.tagsbranch
branch name for tag revisions, defaults to "default".
convert.hg.usebranchnames
preserve branch names. The default is True.
convert.hg.sourcename
records the given string as a 'convert_source' extra value on each commit made in the target repository. The default is None.
convert.hg.preserve-hash
only works with mercurial sources. Make convert prevent performance improvement to the list of modified files in commits when such an improvement would cause the hash of a commit to change. The default is False.

All Destinations

All destination types accept the following options:

convert.skiptags
does not convert tags from the source repo to the target repo. The default is False.

options ([+] can be repeated):

--authors FILE username mapping filename (DEPRECATED) (use --authormap instead)
-s --source-type TYPE source repository type
-d --dest-type TYPE destination repository type
-r --rev REV [+] import up to source revision REV
-A --authormap FILE remap usernames using this file
--filemap FILE remap file names using contents of file
--full apply filemap changes by converting all files again
--splicemap FILE splice synthesized history into place
--branchmap FILE change branch names while converting
--branchsort try to sort changesets by branches
--datesort try to sort changesets by date
--sourcesort preserve source changesets order
--closesort try to reorder closed revisions

global options ([+] can be repeated):

-R --repository REPO repository root directory or name of overlay bundle file
--cwd DIR change working directory
-y --noninteractive do not prompt, automatically pick the first choice for all prompts
-q --quiet suppress output
-v --verbose enable additional output
--color TYPE when to colorize (boolean, always, auto, never, or debug)
--config CONFIG [+] set/override config option (use 'section.name=value')
--debug enable debugging output
--debugger start debugger
--encoding ENCODE set the charset encoding (default: UTF-8)
--encodingmode MODE set the charset encoding mode (default: strict)
--traceback always print a traceback on exception
--time time how long the command takes
--profile print command execution profile
--version output version information and exit
-h --help display help and exit
--hidden consider hidden changesets
--pager TYPE when to paginate (boolean, always, auto, or never) (default: auto)