Launchpad provides a free service which imports the trunk of a project from Subversion, CVS, or Git to Bazaar, or from Git to Git, and then keeps that import up to date. This allows you to make your own branches from the project trunk, and keep them up to date by merging from trunk over time as you develop your feature.

To request an import, please:

• Make sure the project is registered in Launchpad, or register it yourself.

• Then visit the page for requesting a code import and fill out the details.

• This will:
  • Create an empty branch (for Bazaar) or repository (for Git) to contain the imported code.
  • Subscribe you to it so that you will be notified both when the initial import completes and subsequent updates import new revisions.
  • Notify the import operators who will check that the import location and approve the import.

Note: if the import source is a Subversion repository, then it should be a "trunk" directory. If we can't find trunk in the repository, we won't activate the import.

The initial import can take a long time—up to several days, depending on the number of revisions that need to be converted. Once the import is established it will be updated from the CVS or Subversion branch with every 6-12 hours, although an import can be requested at any time by clicking the "Import Now" button on the import page.

Depending on the nature of the import source, there are different restrictions on what branches can be tracked:

• CVS: The importer can only track the HEAD branch of the project.

• Subversion: All branches can usually be imported.

• Git: Repositories with submodules or signed commits in their history can currently only be imported to Git, not to Bazaar.

If you are having trouble using the service, please ask on #launchpad on Freenode, or mail the Launchpad team.