Why might I want to link only a subdirectory? Consider a project with this structure:

docs/
    api/
    manual/
        html/
        module_specs/
library/
    Foo/
        ComponentA/
        ComponentB/
tests/
    Foo/
        ComponentA/
        ComponentB/

On another project, I want to use ComponentB. With svn:externals, this is easy:

library/Foo/ComponentB http://repohost/svn/trunk/library/Foo/ComponentB

and now the directory is added and tracked.

With Git, it's a different story. One solution I've found is using git-subtree, an extension to Git. It takes a bit more effort to setup than svn:externals, but offers the benefits of easily freezing on a specific commit, and squashing all changes into a single commit.

Jon Whitcraft recently had some questions about how to use it, and I answered him via email. Evidently what I gave him worked for him, as he then requested if he could post my guide — which you can find here.

Git Subtree Merging Guide was originally published 10 March 2011 on https://mwop.net by Matthew Weier O'Phinney.

Github suggests that when working with remote repositories, you turn on the autocrlf option, which ensures that changes in line endings do not get accounted for when pushing to and pulling from the remote repo. However, when working with git-svn, this actually causes issues. After turning this option on, I started getting the error "Delta source ended unexpectedly" from git-svn. After a bunch of aimless tinkering, I finally asked myself the questions, "When did this start happening?" and, "Have I changed anything with Git lately?" Once I'd backed out the config change, all started working again.

In summary: don't use git config --global core.autocrlf true when using git-svn.

git-svn Tip: don't use core.autocrlf was originally published 24 September 2008 on https://mwop.net by Matthew Weier O'Phinney.