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I need to import from CSV while preserving existing issue numbers

Added by James Brady over 3 years ago

TLDR

I am trying to do a CSV import from a very old redmine install to a newer one.
I need the issue numbers to stay the same.
Every time I do the import, the process completes successfully, but all of the issue numbers are just autoincremented, starting at 1 (now ~500, because of repeated attempts).
I'm hoping there's some simple step I'm omitting.

Longer story

After creating some of the category and tracker data manually, and creating my users, everything imported ok.
When I exported from my old install, I chose "all columns".
When mapping values in the import wizard, *File Content Preview" shows the proper task numbers in the "#" field (the first field).

I selected the "#" field for "Unique ID". But the numbers just continue to auto increment:

Neither the old nor the new redmine install has any connection to our code repos.
But we still reference these issue numbers all over the place.

I googled to see if anyone else had the same issue, and found nothing.
All of the closely related problems I've seen on the forums are either very old or using a plugin (I'm just using the built-in Import feature), and none of them seem to mention this particular issue at all.

As I said before, we reference these issue numbers in lots of places.
It will add considerable difficulty if we have to adjust all of these references to point to new numbers for these existing tasks.

Old:

Environment:
  Redmine version                          2.0.3.devel.10073
  Ruby version                             1.9.3 (x86_64-linux)
  Rails version                            3.2.6
  Environment                              production
  Database adapter                         Mysql2
Redmine plugins:
  no plugin installed

New:

Environment:
  Redmine version                4.1.1.stable
  Ruby version                   2.5.8-p224 (2020-03-31) [x64-mingw32]
  Rails version                  5.2.4.2
  Environment                    production
  Database adapter               Mysql2
  Mailer queue                   ActiveJob::QueueAdapters::AsyncAdapter
  Mailer delivery                smtp
SCM:
  Git                            2.27.0
  Filesystem                     
Redmine plugins:
  no plugin installed


Replies (2)

RE: I need to import from CSV while preserving existing issue numbers - Added by James Brady over 3 years ago

So, does using csv import mean that the issue numbers will irrevocably change, and there's no way to prevent/mitigate that?

RE: I need to import from CSV while preserving existing issue numbers - Added by Bernhard Rohloff over 3 years ago

James Brady wrote:

So, does using csv import mean that the issue numbers will irrevocably change, and there's no way to prevent/mitigate that?

That's exactly how it works. The new Redmine doesn't know anything about the old instance. It just creates a new issue for every row in your CSV file.
If you would like to upgrade your database to a newer version of Redmine I think an upgrade in multiple steps (2.0 -> 2.6 -> 3.4 -> 4.1.1) should work fine. As there aren't any plugins installed, this shouldn't be a huge deal.

And as always...

... don't forget to backup your database first. ;-)

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