Converting from CVS to git was surprisingly painless, although complicated by the fact that each project repository had a public and private part, since I manage each project's section of my website as part of the project, and I doubt anyone else has much use for the mishmash of templates and config files I use for that.

It was pretty easy add a regexp to prune out the bits I didn't want, convert my unix login to my git user details, and shift everything up a directory with the following commands:

git cvsimport -v -d /opt/cvs -S '(bin/|site/)' \
  -C git-Text-Matrix Text-Matrix \
  -A ~/git-cvsimport-authorconv.txt
cd git-Text-Matrix
git mv src/* .
rmdir src
git commit -m 'Shifted everything up a directory so repository root matches public section of old CVS project.'

I then did the same for the private directories and then placed the newly created directories back under my old project dir as separate git repositories.

Things seem to test OK, although looks like I've been a bit inconsistent with whether I've included generated files like MANIFEST and META.yml from project to project. I expect that'll sort itself out next time I work on any given project.

I really am kicking myself for sticking to CVS so long rather than giving git a try, if anyone else is lingering: make the effort, it'll repay itself within days.

Git honestly makes it effortless to do all those "Best Practice" things you never quite do with CVS because it's too much hassle.

GitHub is just icing on the cake.

Read more...