To compare the old clone with the new, I did: git branch -r | sort | xargs -n 1 git log --decorate=full -n 1 It turned out other than the empty vs 3 word commit messages about two years ago on trunk (which are inherited in all the newer branches), there are two other groups of differences. One branch on the old clone has an extra merge from trunk ( and some extra trunk commits) listed in 'git log', while another branch has the exact opposite - on the old clone has one fewer merge. I see the merge seem to be genuine - the subversion log often says so e.g. "ported from rXXX from trunk", but the extra/missing pattern isn't consistent. So the histories are largely the same, except due to the extra merge, don't have the same sha1 sums. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html