Using git and svn together

The problem

I have svn version 1.6.11, that means it creates a .svn folder in each subfolder

bleah!

but I need to use svn cause is the official versioning tool at my job place.

I would like to use git, cause I feel more comfortable specially when working with branches.

My solution

Start with svn, checkout your repository.

svn co http://url/to/my/svn/repo

Tell svn to ignore git files

cd repo
svn propedit svn:ignore .

and add the following entries

.git
.gitignore

Tell git to ignore svn, create a .gitignore file with this content

.svn

Now create your git repository

git init

Of course, don’t forget to run, at least once

git config --global user.email "you@example.com"
git config --global user.name "Your Name"

Now you can start working on your git repository, first of all, add .gitignore file.

git add .gitignore
git commit -m 'added .gitignore'

or even, if you just want to add every file in the svn repo

git commit -am 'init repo'

Follow this rule

The only rule you should keep is to use only the master branch in this svn+git folder. If you want to use your git workflow you may want to clone the repo locally.

So if you want to clone the repo do

git clone /path/to/svn+git/repo /path/to/git/repo
cd /path/to/svn+git/repo
git remote add upstream /path/to/git/repo

Then go to /path/to/git/repo folder and start coding, using your favourite git branch model.

When you want to commit back to svn do

cd /path/to/svn+git/repo
git pull upstream master
svn add .
svn commit -m 'blah blah ...'

Note that you cannot push from /path/to/git/repo to /path/to/svn+git/repo cause it is not a bare git repository.

Conclusion

Both git and svn will ignore each other and everything will just work. Use Git to develop, then commit to a Subversion server and at the end, everyone ¹ is happy!

1: Everyone means me and my boss :).