Flashes of Panic

I’m porting a very complicated Subversion repository to git using this helpful migration guide, but because I’m operating on a Mac I hit a minor roadblock. Specifically, I was trying to run this sed wizardry the migration guide uses for generating git branches from the Subversion branches, and I got this error:

sed: illegal option — r

The initial web search told me that the issue was that the BSD-style sed that comes standard in Mac OS X (Snow Leopard, in my case) doesn’t provide the same options as Gnu sed. One suggestion was using ports or Homebrew to install gsed instead, but for complicated reasons neither is a valid option for me. (Thumbnail: I uninstalled port to try Homebrew, but my Homebrew installation is broken.)

Then I found this offhand SuperUser comment which solved my problem:

Use -E instead of -r on OS X.

Now you know, aren’t you glad?