freebsd.org git repositories and svn ids

[Artem Belevich]

On Sat, Sep 1, 2012 at 9:29 PM, Artem Belevich <art at freebsd.org> wrote:
> I've just noticed that freebsd commits on github come with a git note.
> If you look past the diff of the commit, you will see a note that
> contains path and revision number.
>
> For example:
> https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd/commit/fa32f1f570be8b878b2965d95b7dbdc37a953938
>
> has a note that says:
> svn path=/head/; revision=239998
>
> So, information is there, it's just not part of the log message itself
> unless you add '--show-notes=*'
>
> While I'm sort of got used to git-svn-id being part of committed log
> messages, keeping conversion metadata separate from the content does
> make sense.

Hmm. I've just cloned github.com/freebsd/freebsd and I don't see the
notes that are shown on the web site.
It appears that notes are not cloned by default. This page suggests
adding "fetch = +refs/notes/*:refs/notes/*" to .git/config

http://alblue.bandlem.com/2011/11/git-tip-of-week-git-notes.html

Alas, that didn't help me much. It did seem to fetch notes for new
commits, but preceeding commits are still note-less.

I guess one would have to start with an empty git repository, then
manually add remote and required 'fetch' magic and only then fetch
commits from that remote. Does anyone know an easier way?

--Artem