SVN Repository Migration

I was asked to help with migration of a branch from huge Subversion repository to new repository that can be easily converted into git. Digging through my old scripts and SVNBook I found methods of the migration via Subversion dump format. There is a command svnrdump that allows to dump or load even remote repository.

svnrdump dump svn://a_server/branches/dev --file dev.dmp

The dump format is binary file with all revisions exported. It can contain full repository or just some sub-directory, as shown in example above.

We are using VisualSVN Server, the new repository can be created in VisualSVN Server Manager, click on Repositories and select New repository. In the wizard you can set name, privileges and other options. In order to load into the repository, the pre-revprop-change hook needs to be set. I put following in the hook:

@echo off
echo Path:     %1
echo Revision: %2
echo User:     %3
echo Propname: %4
echo Action:   %5
echo.

Loading is as simple as

svnrdump load svn://new_server --file dev.dmp

As my dumps were over 2GB, the export and import took several hours, but ended without an issue.