import-bzr.asc

Bazaar

Bazaar is a DVCS tool much like Git, and as a result it’s pretty straightforward to convert a Bazaar repository into a Git one. To accomplish this, you’ll need to import the bzr-fastimport plugin.

Getting the bzr-fastimport plugin

The procedure for installing the fastimport plugin is different on UNIX-like operating systems and on Windows. In the first case, the simplest is to install the bzr-fastimport package that will install all the required dependencies.

For example, with Debian and derived, you would do the following:

$ sudo apt-get install bzr-fastimport

With RHEL, you would do the following:

$ sudo yum install bzr-fast-import

With Fedora, since release 22, the new package manager is dnf:

$ sudo dnf install bzr-fastimport

If the package is not available, you may install it as a plugin:

$ mkdir --parents ~/.bazaar/plugins/bzr     # creates the necessary folders for the plugins
$ cd ~/.bazaar/plugins/bzr
$ bzr branch lp:bzr-fastimport fastimport   # imports the fastimport plugin
$ cd fastimport
$ sudo python setup.py install --record=files.txt   # installs the plugin

For this plugin to work, you’ll also need the fastimport Python module. You can check whether it is present or not and install it with the following commands:

$ python -c "import fastimport"
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
ImportError: No module named fastimport
$ pip install fastimport

If it is not available, you can download it at address https://pypi.python.org/pypi/fastimport/.

In the second case (on Windows), bzr-fastimport is automatically installed with the standalone version and the default installation (let all the checkboxes checked). So in this case you have nothing to do.

At this point, the way to import a Bazaar repository differs according to that you have a single branch or you are working with a repository that has several branches.

Project with a single branch

Now cd in the directory that contains your Bazaar repository and initialize the Git repository:

$ cd /path/to/the/bzr/repository
$ git init

Now, you can simply export your Bazaar repository and convert it into a Git repository using the following command:

$ bzr fast-export --plain . | git fast-import

Depending on the size of the project, your Git repository is built in a lapse from a few seconds to a few minutes.

At this point, the .git directory and your working tree are all set up, but the working tree and the index are not synchronized with HEAD:

$ git status
On master branch
Changes that will be validated:
  (use "git reset HEAD <fichier>..." to unstage)

        removed :        .bzrignore
        removed :        file.txt

This is fixed by typing:

$ git reset --hard HEAD

Now let us have a look at the files to ignore. As .bzrignore’s format is completely compatible with `.gitignore’s format, the simplest is to rename your `.bzrignore file:

$ git mv .bzrignore .gitignore

Then you have to create a commit that contains this change for the migration:

$ git commit -am 'Migration from Bazaar to Git'

That’s all! Now you can push the repository onto its new home server:

$ git remote add origin git@my-git-server:mygitrepository.git
$ git push origin --all
$ git push origin --tags

Case of a project with a main branch and a working branch

You can also import a Bazaar repository that contains branches. Let us suppose that you have two branches: one represents the main branch (myProject.trunk), the other one is the working branch (myProject.work).

$ ls
myProject.trunk myProject.work

Create the Git repository and cd into it:

$ git init git-repo
$ cd git-repo

Pull the master branch into git:

$ bzr fast-export --export-marks=../marks.bzr ../myProject.trunk | \
git fast-import --export-marks=../marks.git

Pull the working branch into Git:

$ bzr fast-export --marks=../marks.bzr --git-branch=work ../myProject.work | \
git fast-import --import-marks=../marks.git --export-marks=../marks.git

Now git branch shows you the master branch as well as the work branch. Check the logs to make sure they’re complete and get rid of the marks.bzr and marks.git files.

Your working copy is still unsynchronized, so let’s reset it:

$ git reset --hard HEAD

Your Git repository is ready to use.