A little renaming and clarification
Bind fast-import's stdin so we can read the results of sending the "ls" command
Avoid creating commits that change nothing
Disable overly-verbose trace logging as file contents are streamed from SVN to Git
Add Git as a submodule so anyone doing this conversion ends up using the fast-import fix

See http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/228736
Build and run a patched Git whose fast-import can handle ls commands on the root directory