git-svn --ignore-paths

Question

I\'m struggling for a number of hours now with the --ignore-paths option to git-svn, in an attempt to fetch only certain tags from a large repository.

I want to start

Answer 1

I was having this same problem today: my regexp would just never match... Make sure you know what the target paths actually look like. I was making an incorrect assumption about the structure of the paths that were being fed to my regexp.

To find out what the paths look like, make git-svn output each path to the console as it tests them:

NOTE: Just in case, make a backup copy of the git-svn file first!

1. Open the git-svn script in a text editor. My script was /libexec/git-core/git-svn.
2. Locate the is_path_ignored subroutine.
3. Add a print statement above the first return statement, as follows...

sub is_path_ignored {
    my ($self, $path) = @_;

    print STDERR "$path\n"; //<-- **ADD THIS LINE**

    return 1 if in_dot_git($path);
    return 1 if defined($self->{ignore_regex}) &&
            $path =~ m!$self->{ignore_regex}!;
    return 0 unless defined($_ignore_regex);
    return 1 if $path =~ m!$_ignore_regex!o;
    return 0;
}

Now use git-svn again with the --ignore-paths switch.

I realised that instead of paths like trunk/baz it was actually using bar/trunk/baz

So instead of

--ignore-paths='^(?:trunk|branches|tags)/baz' 

I needed to use

--ignore-paths='^bar/(?:trunk|branches|tags)/baz'

Don't forget to remove the print statement from the git-svn script.