Adding older history from svn project with git svn

Question

I downloaded an svn repository with

git svn clone -s svn+ssh://svn.dummy.com -r666666:HEAD

Now I'd like to add older history to the project. Can I do this later on or do I have to download the whole project again?

What I basically want to achieve is checking out a huge package with its history. git svn always crashes at some point. SubGit doesn't work at all (for me) with svn+ssh. Alternatives are welcome.

Answer 1

Two advices: import/convert the entire Subversion repository from the beginning and use SubGit for conversion.

It is possible to add older history later (I did it two years ago) but it is not fun at all. Some requirements need to be met in order to be possible and the process is not straight forward. git itself does not help you very much as this is a very unusual operation. You can find the entire workflow, step by step, in this article.

More, it will confuse your workmates because the commit identifiers change in the process and they will end up with duplicate commits (commits with the same message and file changes but with different hashes).

SubGit does a better conversion than git svn. The timeline it generates looks more like the original Subversion timeline.