diff --git a/borg/testsuite/convert.py b/borg/testsuite/convert.py
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..e201581c3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/borg/testsuite/convert.py
@@ -0,0 +1,108 @@
+import binascii
+import os
+import pytest
+import shutil
+import tempfile
+
+import attic.repository
+
+from ..helpers import IntegrityError
+from ..repository import Repository, MAGIC
+from . import BaseTestCase
+
+class NotImplementedException(Exception):
+    pass
+
+class ConversionTestCase(BaseTestCase):
+
+    def open(self, path, repo_type  = Repository, create=False):
+        return repo_type(os.path.join(path, 'repository'), create = create)
+
+    def setUp(self):
+        self.tmppath = tempfile.mkdtemp()
+        self.attic_repo = self.open(self.tmppath,
+                                    repo_type = attic.repository.Repository,
+                                    create = True)
+        # throw some stuff in that repo, copied from `RepositoryTestCase.test1`_
+        for x in range(100):
+            self.attic_repo.put(('%-32d' % x).encode('ascii'), b'SOMEDATA')
+        self.attic_repo.close()
+
+    def test_convert(self):
+        self.repository = self.open(self.tmppath)
+        # check should fail because of magic number
+        assert not self.repository.check() # can't check raises() because check() handles the error
+        self.repository.close()
+        self.convert()
+        self.repository = self.open(self.tmppath)
+        assert self.repository.check() # can't check raises() because check() handles the error
+        self.repository.close()
+
+    def convert(self):
+        '''convert an attic repository to a borg repository
+
+        those are the files that need to be converted here, from most
+        important to least important: segments, key files, and various
+        caches, the latter being optional, as they will be rebuilt if
+        missing.'''
+        self.convert_segments()
+        with pytest.raises(NotImplementedException):
+            self.convert_keyfiles()
+        with pytest.raises(NotImplementedException):
+            self.convert_cache()
+
+    def convert_segments(self):
+        '''convert repository segments from attic to borg
+
+        replacement pattern is `s/ATTICSEG/BORG_SEG/` in files in
+        `$ATTIC_REPO/data/**`.
+
+        luckily the segment length didn't change so we can just
+        replace the 8 first bytes of all regular files in there.
+
+        `Repository.segment_iterator()` could be used here.'''
+        self.repository = self.open(self.tmppath)
+        segs = [ filename for i, filename in self.repository.io.segment_iterator() ]
+        self.repository.close()
+        for filename in segs:
+            print("converting segment %s..." % filename)
+            with open(filename, 'r+b') as segment:
+                segment.seek(0)
+                segment.write(MAGIC)
+
+    def convert_keyfiles(self):
+        '''convert key files from attic to borg
+
+        replacement pattern is `s/ATTIC KEY/BORG_KEY/` in
+        `get_keys_dir()`, that is `$ATTIC_KEYS_DIR` or
+        `$HOME/.attic/keys`, and moved to `$BORG_KEYS_DIR` or
+        `$HOME/.borg/keys`.
+
+        the keyfiles are loaded by `KeyfileKey.find_key_file()`. that
+        finds the keys with the right identifier for the repo, no need
+        to decrypt to convert. will need to rewrite the whole key file
+        because magic number length changed.'''
+        raise NotImplementedException('not implemented')
+
+    def convert_cache(self):
+        '''convert caches from attic to borg
+
+        those are all hash indexes, so we need to
+        `s/ATTICIDX/BORG_IDX/` in a few locations:
+        
+        * the repository index (in `$ATTIC_REPO/index.%d`, where `%d`
+          is the `Repository.get_index_transaction_id()`), which we
+          should probably update, with a lock, see
+          `Repository.open()`, which i'm not sure we should use
+          because it may write data on `Repository.close()`...
+
+        * the `files` and `chunks` cache (in
+          `$HOME/.cache/attic/<repoid>/`), which we could just drop,
+          but if we'd want to convert, we could open it with the
+          `Cache.open()`, edit in place and then `Cache.close()` to
+          make sure we have locking right
+        '''
+        raise NotImplementedException('not implemented')
+
+    def tearDown(self):
+        shutil.rmtree(self.tmppath)