Migrate from StarTeam to Subversion

[Mark Rutz]

Hello,

 

Does anyone have procedures or tools for converting Micro Focus StarTeam repositories to Subversion?  We would like to convert the main branch with history for each repository.  The team is small enough there is no need to port the existing permissions scheme, etc.  The branches can be left for cold storage, as I don’t expect them to be needed by any of the developers going forward.  We have a few perpetual licenses for StarTeam to keep it in the attic just in case.

 

I’m aware of the svn-importer tool from Polarion (https://polarion.plm.automation.siemens.com/products/svn/svn_importer), but as far as I know that hasn’t been updated since 2011.  I was hoping to find something more current.  Recently StarTeam added interfaces to work with Git, but I have yet to see a way to use that angle for the conversion either.

 

Thanks in advance for any recommended strategies and tools.

 

Mark Rutz
Test Engineering Manager
Comtech Mobile Datacom Corporation
(240) 686-3362 (w)
(202) 843-4678 (c)

 

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[Nathan Hartman]

On Mon, Feb 1, 2021 at 2:21 PM Mark Rutz <mark...@comtechmobile.com> wrote:

Hello,

 

Does anyone have procedures or tools for converting Micro Focus StarTeam repositories to Subversion?  We would like to convert the main branch with history for each repository.  The team is small enough there is no need to port the existing permissions scheme, etc.  The branches can be left for cold storage, as I don’t expect them to be needed by any of the developers going forward.  We have a few perpetual licenses for StarTeam to keep it in the attic just in case.

 

I’m aware of the svn-importer tool from Polarion (https://polarion.plm.automation.siemens.com/products/svn/svn_importer), but as far as I know that hasn’t been updated since 2011.  I was hoping to find something more current.  Recently StarTeam added interfaces to work with Git, but I have yet to see a way to use that angle for the conversion either.

 

Thanks in advance for any recommended strategies and tools

Hi Mark,

With the caveat that I haven't worked with StarTeam nor the above 

svn-importer tool:

Since the svn-importer tool is no-cost and claims to do the trick, 

that is the first avenue I would investigate, even though the tool 

appears not to have been updated in a while. If it can migrate the 

data to Subversion successfully, even if it generates an older 

Subversion format, you should be able to then use Subversion to update 

the data format to the latest.

If that avenue doesn't get the job done for whatever reason, I would 

then check whether StarTeam can export a dumpstream that Subversion 

can import directly (though I think this is unlikely).

If not, then StarTeam's interfaces to Git that you mentioned may be 

useful as an intermediate step. Occasionally we get questions about 

how to migrate from Git to Subversion. You may want to search the list 

archives, see [1], for such questions. We just recently had a question 

about Git to Subversion migration, see [2]. I'll mention here that Git 

has a git-svn bridge that can push a linear sequence of git commits to 

Subversion. Note that you may have to do some manipulation of the 

intermediate git repository's history to get it into a state that will 

push cleanly to a Subversion repository. This might take a little 

experimentation, or it might just work. The git-svn bridge is part of 

Git; see [3] and [4].

It's possible others will chime in with more thoughts/experiences.

Feel free to ask more questions if you need to, and it would be great 

if you could circle back later and tell us what ultimately did the 

trick. That will help others who have the same question in the future.

[1] https://subversion.apache.org/mailing-lists.html

[2] https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/ref1c000c9d34869f6785cddd38d1e054c8007c0bc56905476e288b3d%40%3Cusers.subversion.apache.org%3E

[3] https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-and-Other-Systems-Git-as-a-Client

[4] https://git-scm.com/docs/git-svn

Cheers,

Nathan

[Mark Rutz]

Nathan,

 

Thank you for the very detailed response.  I will look into these.

 

Much appreciated!

 

Mark Rutz

 

From: Nathan Hartman <hartman...@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, February 1, 2021 3:58 PM
To: Mark Rutz <mark...@comtechmobile.com>
Cc: us...@subversion.apache.org
Subject: Re: Migrate from StarTeam to Subversion

 

 

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[Daniel Shahaf]

Mark Rutz wrote on Mon, 01 Feb 2021 19:21 +00:00:
> Does anyone have procedures or tools for converting Micro Focus
> StarTeam repositories to Subversion? We would like to convert the main
> branch with history for each repository.

For converting a single branch from any external VCS, the fallback
strategy (if no preëxisting tool is available) is a plain old "checkout
each commit in the history in sequence and re-commit it" loop. I hope
you won't need to resort to it in your case, but I don't think we have a
write-up of it, so I'll outline it here.

The basic idea is (using svn syntax for both the old and new
VCS's, since that's the only syntax everyone on this list is
guaranteed to speak):

% mkdir wc
% $oldvcs checkout -r0 $oldURL wc
% svnadmin create foo
% printf '#!/bin/sh\ntrue\n' > foo/hooks/pre-revprop-change
% chmod +x foo/hooks/pre-revprop-change
% svn co file://$PWD/foo wc --force # --force suppresses a "Directory not empty" error
% cd wc
% # At this point, wc/ is a working copy of both $oldvcs and svn, both of them at r0 (an empty tree).
% i=0
% while [ $i -le `$oldvcs info --show-item=revision ./` ]; do
svn cleanup && # purge pristines
$oldvcs up -r $((++i)) &&
svn-addremove &&
svn revert -R ./.$oldvcs &&
svn ci -m "Re-committing r$i" &&
for propname in svn:date svn:author ; do svn ps --revprop -r $i -- $propname "$($oldvcs pg --revprop -r $i -- $propname)" ; done
done
%

where svn-addremove(1) should be a script that does «svn add»
for all files that are '?' in `svn status` (= unversioned) and «svn rm»
for all files that are '!' in `svn status` (= missing), like the
eponymous hg(1) subcommand. There's an implementation in
https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/subversion/branches/addremove, but I
don't know its status, and in any case it may be easier to find a script
implementation or write one.

There is no requirement to use file:// syntax; I only did that to make
the example self-contained.

Cheers,

Daniel