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Junio C Hamano9e395072008-07-31 22:11:211<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"><title>Git User's Manual (for version 1.5.3 or newer)</title><link rel="stylesheet" href="docbook-xsl.css" type="text/css"><meta name="generator" content="DocBook XSL Stylesheets V1.73.2"></head><body bgcolor="white" text="black" link="#0000FF" vlink="#840084" alink="#0000FF"><div class="book" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h1 class="title"><a name="id240748"></a>Git User's Manual (for version 1.5.3 or newer)</h1></div></div><hr></div><div class="toc"><p><b>Table of Contents</b></p><dl><dt><span class="preface"><a href="#id318563">Preface</a></span></dt><dt><span class="chapter"><a href="#repositories-and-branches">1. Repositories and Branches</a></span></dt><dd><dl><dt><span class="section"><a href="#how-to-get-a-git-repository">How to get a git repository</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#how-to-check-out">How to check out a different version of a project</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#understanding-commits">Understanding History: Commits</a></span></dt><dd><dl><dt><span class="section"><a href="#understanding-reachability">Understanding history: commits, parents, and reachability</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#history-diagrams">Understanding history: History diagrams</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#what-is-a-branch">Understanding history: What is a branch?</a></span></dt></dl></dd><dt><span class="section"><a href="#manipulating-branches">Manipulating branches</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#detached-head">Examining an old version without creating a new branch</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#examining-remote-branches">Examining branches from a remote repository</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#how-git-stores-references">Naming branches, tags, and other references</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#Updating-a-repository-with-git-fetch">Updating a repository with git-fetch</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#fetching-branches">Fetching branches from other repositories</a></span></dt></dl></dd><dt><span class="chapter"><a href="#exploring-git-history">2. Exploring git history</a></span></dt><dd><dl><dt><span class="section"><a href="#using-bisect">How to use bisect to find a regression</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#naming-commits">Naming commits</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#creating-tags">Creating tags</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#browsing-revisions">Browsing revisions</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#generating-diffs">Generating diffs</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#viewing-old-file-versions">Viewing old file versions</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#history-examples">Examples</a></span></dt><dd><dl><dt><span class="section"><a href="#counting-commits-on-a-branch">Counting the number of commits on a branch</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#checking-for-equal-branches">Check whether two branches point at the same history</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#finding-tagged-descendants">Find first tagged version including a given fix</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#showing-commits-unique-to-a-branch">Showing commits unique to a given branch</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#making-a-release">Creating a changelog and tarball for a software release</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#Finding-comments-with-given-content">Finding commits referencing a file with given content</a></span></dt></dl></dd></dl></dd><dt><span class="chapter"><a href="#Developing-with-git">3. Developing with git</a></span></dt><dd><dl><dt><span class="section"><a href="#telling-git-your-name">Telling git your name</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#creating-a-new-repository">Creating a new repository</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#how-to-make-a-commit">How to make a commit</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#creating-good-commit-messages">Creating good commit messages</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#ignoring-files">Ignoring files</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#how-to-merge">How to merge</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#resolving-a-merge">Resolving a merge</a></span></dt><dd><dl><dt><span class="section"><a href="#conflict-resolution">Getting conflict-resolution help during a merge</a></span></dt></dl></dd><dt><span class="section"><a href="#undoing-a-merge">Undoing a merge</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#fast-forwards">Fast-forward merges</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#fixing-mistakes">Fixing mistakes</a></span></dt><dd><dl><dt><span class="section"><a href="#reverting-a-commit">Fixing a mistake with a new commit</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#fixing-a-mistake-by-rewriting-history">Fixing a mistake by rewriting history</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#checkout-of-path">Checking out an old version of a file</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#interrupted-work">Temporarily setting aside work in progress</a></span></dt></dl></dd><dt><span class="section"><a href="#ensuring-good-performance">Ensuring good performance</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#ensuring-reliability">Ensuring reliability</a></span></dt><dd><dl><dt><span class="section"><a href="#checking-for-corruption">Checking the repository for corruption</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#recovering-lost-changes">Recovering lost changes</a></span></dt></dl></dd></dl></dd><dt><span class="chapter"><a href="#sharing-development">4. Sharing development with others</a></span></dt><dd><dl><dt><span class="section"><a href="#getting-updates-with-git-pull">Getting updates with git-pull</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#submitting-patches">Submitting patches to a project</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#importing-patches">Importing patches to a project</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#public-repositories">Public git repositories</a></span></dt><dd><dl><dt><span class="section"><a href="#setting-up-a-public-repository">Setting up a public repository</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#exporting-via-git">Exporting a git repository via the git protocol</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#exporting-via-http">Exporting a git repository via http</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#pushing-changes-to-a-public-repository">Pushing changes to a public repository</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#forcing-push">What to do when a push fails</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#setting-up-a-shared-repository">Setting up a shared repository</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#setting-up-gitweb">Allowing web browsing of a repository</a></span></dt></dl></dd><dt><span class="section"><a href="#sharing-development-examples">Examples</a></span></dt><dd><dl><dt><span class="section"><a href="#maintaining-topic-branches">Maintaining topic branches for a Linux subsystem maintainer</a></span></dt></dl></dd></dl></dd><dt><span class="chapter"><a href="#cleaning-up-history">5. Rewriting history and maintaining patch series</a></span></dt><dd><dl><dt><span class="section"><a href="#patch-series">Creating the perfect patch series</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#using-git-rebase">Keeping a patch series up to date using git-rebase</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#rewriting-one-commit">Rewriting a single commit</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#reordering-patch-series">Reordering or selecting from a patch series</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#patch-series-tools">Other tools</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#problems-with-rewriting-history">Problems with rewriting history</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#bisect-merges">Why bisecting merge commits can be harder than bisecting linear history</a></span></dt></dl></dd><dt><span class="chapter"><a href="#advanced-branch-management">6. Advanced branch management</a></span></dt><dd><dl><dt><span class="section"><a href="#fetching-individual-branches">Fetching individual branches</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#fetch-fast-forwards">git fetch and fast-forwards</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#forcing-fetch">Forcing git-fetch to do non-fast-forward updates</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#remote-branch-configuration">Configuring remote branches</a></span></dt></dl></dd><dt><span class="chapter"><a href="#git-concepts">7. Git concepts</a></span></dt><dd><dl><dt><span class="section"><a href="#the-object-database">The Object Database</a></span></dt><dd><dl><dt><span class="section"><a href="#commit-object">Commit Object</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#tree-object">Tree Object</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#blob-object">Blob Object</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#trust">Trust</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#tag-object">Tag Object</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#pack-files">How git stores objects efficiently: pack files</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#dangling-objects">Dangling objects</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#recovering-from-repository-corruption">Recovering from repository corruption</a></span></dt></dl></dd><dt><span class="section"><a href="#the-index">The index</a></span></dt></dl></dd><dt><span class="chapter"><a href="#submodules">8. Submodules</a></span></dt><dd><dl><dt><span class="section"><a href="#_pitfalls_with_submodules">Pitfalls with submodules</a></span></dt></dl></dd><dt><span class="chapter"><a href="#low-level-operations">9. Low-level git operations</a></span></dt><dd><dl><dt><span class="section"><a href="#object-manipulation">Object access and manipulation</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#the-workflow">The Workflow</a></span></dt><dd><dl><dt><span class="section"><a href="#working-directory-to-index">working directory -&gt; index</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#index-to-object-database">index -&gt; object database</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#object-database-to-index">object database -&gt; index</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#index-to-working-directory">index -&gt; working directory</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#tying-it-all-together">Tying it all together</a></span></dt></dl></dd><dt><span class="section"><a href="#examining-the-data">Examining the data</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#merging-multiple-trees">Merging multiple trees</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#merging-multiple-trees-2">Merging multiple trees, continued</a></span></dt></dl></dd><dt><span class="chapter"><a href="#hacking-git">10. Hacking git</a></span></dt><dd><dl><dt><span class="section"><a href="#object-details">Object storage format</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#birdview-on-the-source-code">A birds-eye view of Git's source code</a></span></dt></dl></dd><dt><span class="chapter"><a href="#glossary">11. GIT Glossary</a></span></dt><dt><span class="appendix"><a href="#git-quick-start">A. Git Quick Reference</a></span></dt><dd><dl><dt><span class="section"><a href="#quick-creating-a-new-repository">Creating a new repository</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#managing-branches">Managing branches</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#exploring-history">Exploring history</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#making-changes">Making changes</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#merging">Merging</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#sharing-your-changes">Sharing your changes</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#repository-maintenance">Repository maintenance</a></span></dt></dl></dd><dt><span class="appendix"><a href="#todo">B. Notes and todo list for this manual</a></span></dt></dl></div><div class="preface" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title"><a name="id318563"></a>Preface</h2></div></div></div><p>Git is a fast distributed revision control system.</p><p>This manual is designed to be readable by someone with basic UNIX
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312command-line skills, but no previous knowledge of git.</p><p><a class="xref" href="#repositories-and-branches" title="Chapter 1. Repositories and Branches">Chapter 1, <i>Repositories and Branches</i></a> and <a class="xref" href="#exploring-git-history" title="Chapter 2. Exploring git history">Chapter 2, <i>Exploring git history</i></a> explain how
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:433to fetch and study a project using git—read these chapters to learn how
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:334to build and test a particular version of a software project, search for
5regressions, and so on.</p><p>People needing to do actual development will also want to read
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:316<a class="xref" href="#Developing-with-git" title="Chapter 3. Developing with git">Chapter 3, <i>Developing with git</i></a> and <a class="xref" href="#sharing-development" title="Chapter 4. Sharing development with others">Chapter 4, <i>Sharing development with others</i></a>.</p><p>Further chapters cover more specialized topics.</p><p>Comprehensive reference documentation is available through the man
7pages. For a command such as "git clone &lt;repo&gt;", just use</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ man git-clone</p></div><p>See also <a class="xref" href="#git-quick-start" title="Appendix A. Git Quick Reference">Appendix A, <i>Git Quick Reference</i></a> for a brief overview of git commands,
8without any explanation.</p><p>Finally, see <a class="xref" href="#todo" title="Appendix B. Notes and todo list for this manual">Appendix B, <i>Notes and todo list for this manual</i></a> for ways that you can help make this manual more
Junio C Hamanofce7c7e2008-07-02 03:06:389complete.</p></div><div class="chapter" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title"><a name="repositories-and-branches"></a>Chapter 1. Repositories and Branches</h2></div></div></div><div class="toc"><p><b>Table of Contents</b></p><dl><dt><span class="section"><a href="#how-to-get-a-git-repository">How to get a git repository</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#how-to-check-out">How to check out a different version of a project</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#understanding-commits">Understanding History: Commits</a></span></dt><dd><dl><dt><span class="section"><a href="#understanding-reachability">Understanding history: commits, parents, and reachability</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#history-diagrams">Understanding history: History diagrams</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#what-is-a-branch">Understanding history: What is a branch?</a></span></dt></dl></dd><dt><span class="section"><a href="#manipulating-branches">Manipulating branches</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#detached-head">Examining an old version without creating a new branch</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#examining-remote-branches">Examining branches from a remote repository</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#how-git-stores-references">Naming branches, tags, and other references</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#Updating-a-repository-with-git-fetch">Updating a repository with git-fetch</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#fetching-branches">Fetching branches from other repositories</a></span></dt></dl></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="how-to-get-a-git-repository"></a>How to get a git repository</h2></div></div></div><p>It will be useful to have a git repository to experiment with as you
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:3110read this manual.</p><p>The best way to get one is by using the <a class="ulink" href="git-clone.html" target="_top">git-clone(1)</a> command to
Junio C Hamano8b8b0f22007-08-26 22:10:2611download a copy of an existing repository. If you don't already have a
12project in mind, here are some interesting examples:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>        # git itself (approx. 10MB download):<br>
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:4313$ git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/git/git.git<br>
14        # the linux kernel (approx. 150MB download):<br>
15$ git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git</p></div><p>The initial clone may be time-consuming for a large project, but you
Junio C Hamanoce3650e2007-11-26 04:20:1116will only need to clone once.</p><p>The clone command creates a new directory named after the project ("git"
17or "linux-2.6" in the examples above). After you cd into this
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:2218directory, you will see that it contains a copy of the project files,
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:3119called the <a class="link" href="#def_working_tree">working tree</a>, together with a special
Junio C Hamanoce3650e2007-11-26 04:20:1120top-level directory named ".git", which contains all the information
21about the history of the project.</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="how-to-check-out"></a>How to check out a different version of a project</h2></div></div></div><p>Git is best thought of as a tool for storing the history of a collection
Junio C Hamano8b8b0f22007-08-26 22:10:2622of files. It stores the history as a compressed collection of
23interrelated snapshots of the project's contents. In git each such
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:3124version is called a <a class="link" href="#def_commit">commit</a>.</p><p>Those snapshots aren't necessarily all arranged in a single line from
Junio C Hamanoce3650e2007-11-26 04:20:1125oldest to newest; instead, work may simultaneously proceed along
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:3126parallel lines of development, called <a class="link" href="#def_branch">branches</a>, which may
Junio C Hamanoce3650e2007-11-26 04:20:1127merge and diverge.</p><p>A single git repository can track development on multiple branches. It
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:3128does this by keeping a list of <a class="link" href="#def_head">heads</a> which reference the
29latest commit on each branch; the <a class="ulink" href="git-branch.html" target="_top">git-branch(1)</a> command shows
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:4330you the list of branch heads:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git branch<br>
31* master</p></div><p>A freshly cloned repository contains a single branch head, by default
Junio C Hamano0e3cb532007-04-17 08:28:1132named "master", with the working directory initialized to the state of
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:3133the project referred to by that branch head.</p><p>Most projects also use <a class="link" href="#def_tag">tags</a>. Tags, like heads, are
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:4134references into the project's history, and can be listed using the
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:3135<a class="ulink" href="git-tag.html" target="_top">git-tag(1)</a> command:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git tag -l<br>
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:2236v2.6.11<br>
37v2.6.11-tree<br>
38v2.6.12<br>
39v2.6.12-rc2<br>
40v2.6.12-rc3<br>
41v2.6.12-rc4<br>
42v2.6.12-rc5<br>
43v2.6.12-rc6<br>
44v2.6.13<br>
45...</p></div><p>Tags are expected to always point at the same version of a project,
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:4146while heads are expected to advance as development progresses.</p><p>Create a new branch head pointing to one of these versions and check it
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:3147out using <a class="ulink" href="git-checkout.html" target="_top">git-checkout(1)</a>:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git checkout -b new v2.6.13</p></div><p>The working directory then reflects the contents that the project had
48when it was tagged v2.6.13, and <a class="ulink" href="git-branch.html" target="_top">git-branch(1)</a> shows two
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:4349branches, with an asterisk marking the currently checked-out branch:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git branch<br>
50  master<br>
51* new</p></div><p>If you decide that you'd rather see version 2.6.17, you can modify
52the current branch to point at v2.6.17 instead, with</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git reset --hard v2.6.17</p></div><p>Note that if the current branch head was your only reference to a
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:2253particular point in history, then resetting that branch may leave you
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:4154with no way to find the history it used to point to; so use this command
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:5355carefully.</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="understanding-commits"></a>Understanding History: Commits</h2></div></div></div><p>Every change in the history of a project is represented by a commit.
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:3156The <a class="ulink" href="git-show.html" target="_top">git-show(1)</a> command shows the most recent commit on the
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:4357current branch:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git show<br>
Junio C Hamano8b8b0f22007-08-26 22:10:2658commit 17cf781661e6d38f737f15f53ab552f1e95960d7<br>
59Author: Linus Torvalds &lt;torvalds@ppc970.osdl.org.(none)&gt;<br>
60Date:   Tue Apr 19 14:11:06 2005 -0700<br>
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:2261<br>
Junio C Hamano8b8b0f22007-08-26 22:10:2662    Remove duplicate getenv(DB_ENVIRONMENT) call<br>
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:2263<br>
Junio C Hamano8b8b0f22007-08-26 22:10:2664    Noted by Tony Luck.<br>
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:2265<br>
Junio C Hamano8b8b0f22007-08-26 22:10:2666diff --git a/init-db.c b/init-db.c<br>
67index 65898fa..b002dc6 100644<br>
68--- a/init-db.c<br>
69+++ b/init-db.c<br>
70@@ -7,7 +7,7 @@<br>
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:2271<br>
Junio C Hamano8b8b0f22007-08-26 22:10:2672 int main(int argc, char **argv)<br>
73 {<br>
74-       char *sha1_dir = getenv(DB_ENVIRONMENT), *path;<br>
75+       char *sha1_dir, *path;<br>
76        int len, i;<br>
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:2277<br>
Junio C Hamano8b8b0f22007-08-26 22:10:2678        if (mkdir(".git", 0755) &lt; 0) {</p></div><p>As you can see, a commit shows who made the latest change, what they
Junio C Hamanoaa83a7d2007-03-05 02:37:2979did, and why.</p><p>Every commit has a 40-hexdigit id, sometimes called the "object name" or the
Junio C Hamanofce7c7e2008-07-02 03:06:3880"SHA1 id", shown on the first line of the "git-show" output. You can usually
Junio C Hamanoaa83a7d2007-03-05 02:37:2981refer to a commit by a shorter name, such as a tag or a branch name, but this
82longer name can also be useful. Most importantly, it is a globally unique
83name for this commit: so if you tell somebody else the object name (for
84example in email), then you are guaranteed that name will refer to the same
85commit in their repository that it does in yours (assuming their repository
86has that commit at all). Since the object name is computed as a hash over the
87contents of the commit, you are guaranteed that the commit can never change
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:3188without its name also changing.</p><p>In fact, in <a class="xref" href="#git-concepts" title="Chapter 7. Git concepts">Chapter 7, <i>Git concepts</i></a> we shall see that everything stored in git
Junio C Hamanoaa83a7d2007-03-05 02:37:2989history, including file data and directory contents, is stored in an object
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:5390with a name that is a hash of its contents.</p><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a name="understanding-reachability"></a>Understanding history: commits, parents, and reachability</h3></div></div></div><p>Every commit (except the very first commit in a project) also has a
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:2291parent commit which shows what happened before this commit.
92Following the chain of parents will eventually take you back to the
93beginning of the project.</p><p>However, the commits do not form a simple list; git allows lines of
94development to diverge and then reconverge, and the point where two
95lines of development reconverge is called a "merge". The commit
96representing a merge can therefore have more than one parent, with
97each parent representing the most recent commit on one of the lines
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:3198of development leading to that point.</p><p>The best way to see how this works is using the <a class="ulink" href="gitk.html" target="_top">gitk(1)</a>
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:2299command; running gitk now on a git repository and looking for merge
100commits will help understand how the git organizes history.</p><p>In the following, we say that commit X is "reachable" from commit Y
101if commit X is an ancestor of commit Y. Equivalently, you could say
Junio C Hamanoa6387422007-08-25 03:54:27102that Y is a descendant of X, or that there is a chain of parents
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:53103leading from commit Y to commit X.</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a name="history-diagrams"></a>Understanding history: History diagrams</h3></div></div></div><p>We will sometimes represent git history using diagrams like the one
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22104below. Commits are shown as "o", and the links between them with
Junio C Hamanoc51fede2007-03-12 07:29:20105lines drawn with - / and \. Time goes left to right:</p><pre class="literallayout"> o--o--o &lt;-- Branch A
106 /
107 o--o--o &lt;-- master
108 \
109 o--o--o &lt;-- Branch B</pre><p>If we need to talk about a particular commit, the character "o" may
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:53110be replaced with another letter or number.</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a name="what-is-a-branch"></a>Understanding history: What is a branch?</h3></div></div></div><p>When we need to be precise, we will use the word "branch" to mean a line
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:41111of development, and "branch head" (or just "head") to mean a reference
112to the most recent commit on a branch. In the example above, the branch
113head named "A" is a pointer to one particular commit, but we refer to
114the line of three commits leading up to that point as all being part of
115"branch A".</p><p>However, when no confusion will result, we often just use the term
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:53116"branch" both for branches and for branch heads.</p></div></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="manipulating-branches"></a>Manipulating branches</h2></div></div></div><p>Creating, deleting, and modifying branches is quick and easy; here's
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22117a summary of the commands:</p><div class="variablelist"><dl><dt><span class="term">
118git branch
119</span></dt><dd>
120 list all branches
121</dd><dt><span class="term">
122git branch &lt;branch&gt;
123</span></dt><dd>
124 create a new branch named &lt;branch&gt;, referencing the same
125 point in history as the current branch
126</dd><dt><span class="term">
127git branch &lt;branch&gt; &lt;start-point&gt;
128</span></dt><dd>
129 create a new branch named &lt;branch&gt;, referencing
130 &lt;start-point&gt;, which may be specified any way you like,
131 including using a branch name or a tag name
132</dd><dt><span class="term">
133git branch -d &lt;branch&gt;
134</span></dt><dd>
135 delete the branch &lt;branch&gt;; if the branch you are deleting
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:53136 points to a commit which is not reachable from the current
137 branch, this command will fail with a warning.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22138</dd><dt><span class="term">
139git branch -D &lt;branch&gt;
140</span></dt><dd>
141 even if the branch points to a commit not reachable
142 from the current branch, you may know that that commit
143 is still reachable from some other branch or tag. In that
144 case it is safe to use this command to force git to delete
145 the branch.
146</dd><dt><span class="term">
147git checkout &lt;branch&gt;
148</span></dt><dd>
149 make the current branch &lt;branch&gt;, updating the working
150 directory to reflect the version referenced by &lt;branch&gt;
151</dd><dt><span class="term">
152git checkout -b &lt;new&gt; &lt;start-point&gt;
153</span></dt><dd>
154 create a new branch &lt;new&gt; referencing &lt;start-point&gt;, and
155 check it out.
Junio C Hamano0e3cb532007-04-17 08:28:11156</dd></dl></div><p>The special symbol "HEAD" can always be used to refer to the current
157branch. In fact, git uses a file named "HEAD" in the .git directory to
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43158remember which branch is current:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ cat .git/HEAD<br>
159ref: refs/heads/master</p></div></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="detached-head"></a>Examining an old version without creating a new branch</h2></div></div></div><p>The git-checkout command normally expects a branch head, but will also
Junio C Hamano0e3cb532007-04-17 08:28:11160accept an arbitrary commit; for example, you can check out the commit
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43161referenced by a tag:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git checkout v2.6.17<br>
162Note: moving to "v2.6.17" which isn't a local branch<br>
163If you want to create a new branch from this checkout, you may do so<br>
164(now or later) by using -b with the checkout command again. Example:<br>
165  git checkout -b &lt;new_branch_name&gt;<br>
166HEAD is now at 427abfa... Linux v2.6.17</p></div><p>The HEAD then refers to the SHA1 of the commit instead of to a branch,
167and git branch shows that you are no longer on a branch:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ cat .git/HEAD<br>
Junio C Hamano0e3cb532007-04-17 08:28:11168427abfa28afedffadfca9dd8b067eb6d36bac53f<br>
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43169$ git branch<br>
170* (no branch)<br>
171  master</p></div><p>In this case we say that the HEAD is "detached".</p><p>This is an easy way to check out a particular version without having to
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:53172make up a name for the new branch. You can still create a new branch
173(or tag) for this version later if you decide to.</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="examining-remote-branches"></a>Examining branches from a remote repository</h2></div></div></div><p>The "master" branch that was created at the time you cloned is a copy
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22174of the HEAD in the repository that you cloned from. That repository
175may also have had other branches, though, and your local repository
176keeps branches which track each of those remote branches, which you
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31177can view using the "-r" option to <a class="ulink" href="git-branch.html" target="_top">git-branch(1)</a>:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git branch -r<br>
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43178  origin/HEAD<br>
179  origin/html<br>
180  origin/maint<br>
181  origin/man<br>
182  origin/master<br>
183  origin/next<br>
184  origin/pu<br>
185  origin/todo</p></div><p>You cannot check out these remote-tracking branches, but you can
186examine them on a branch of your own, just as you would a tag:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git checkout -b my-todo-copy origin/todo</p></div><p>Note that the name "origin" is just the name that git uses by default
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22187to refer to the repository that you cloned from.</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="how-git-stores-references"></a>Naming branches, tags, and other references</h2></div></div></div><p>Branches, remote-tracking branches, and tags are all references to
188commits. All references are named with a slash-separated path name
189starting with "refs"; the names we've been using so far are actually
190shorthand:</p><div class="itemizedlist"><ul type="disc"><li>
191The branch "test" is short for "refs/heads/test".
192</li><li>
193The tag "v2.6.18" is short for "refs/tags/v2.6.18".
194</li><li>
195"origin/master" is short for "refs/remotes/origin/master".
196</li></ul></div><p>The full name is occasionally useful if, for example, there ever
Junio C Hamano9810d632007-09-24 01:05:34197exists a tag and a branch with the same name.</p><p>(Newly created refs are actually stored in the .git/refs directory,
198under the path given by their name. However, for efficiency reasons
199they may also be packed together in a single file; see
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31200<a class="ulink" href="git-pack-refs.html" target="_top">git-pack-refs(1)</a>).</p><p>As another useful shortcut, the "HEAD" of a repository can be referred
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:53201to just using the name of that repository. So, for example, "origin"
202is usually a shortcut for the HEAD branch in the repository "origin".</p><p>For the complete list of paths which git checks for references, and
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22203the order it uses to decide which to choose when there are multiple
204references with the same shorthand name, see the "SPECIFYING
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31205REVISIONS" section of <a class="ulink" href="git-rev-parse.html" target="_top">git-rev-parse(1)</a>.</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="Updating-a-repository-with-git-fetch"></a>Updating a repository with git-fetch</h2></div></div></div><p>Eventually the developer cloned from will do additional work in her
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22206repository, creating new commits and advancing the branches to point
207at the new commits.</p><p>The command "git fetch", with no arguments, will update all of the
208remote-tracking branches to the latest version found in her
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43209repository. It will not touch any of your own branches—not even the
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:53210"master" branch that was created for you on clone.</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="fetching-branches"></a>Fetching branches from other repositories</h2></div></div></div><p>You can also track branches from repositories other than the one you
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31211cloned from, using <a class="ulink" href="git-remote.html" target="_top">git-remote(1)</a>:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git remote add linux-nfs git://linux-nfs.org/pub/nfs-2.6.git<br>
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43212$ git fetch linux-nfs<br>
213* refs/remotes/linux-nfs/master: storing branch 'master' ...<br>
214  commit: bf81b46</p></div><p>New remote-tracking branches will be stored under the shorthand name
Junio C Hamanofce7c7e2008-07-02 03:06:38215that you gave "git-remote add", in this case linux-nfs:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git branch -r<br>
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22216linux-nfs/master<br>
217origin/master</p></div><p>If you run "git fetch &lt;remote&gt;" later, the tracking branches for the
218named &lt;remote&gt; will be updated.</p><p>If you examine the file .git/config, you will see that git has added
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43219a new stanza:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ cat .git/config<br>
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22220...<br>
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43221[remote "linux-nfs"]<br>
222        url = git://linux-nfs.org/pub/nfs-2.6.git<br>
223        fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/linux-nfs/*<br>
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22224...</p></div><p>This is what causes git to track the remote's branches; you may modify
225or delete these configuration options by editing .git/config with a
226text editor. (See the "CONFIGURATION FILE" section of
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31227<a class="ulink" href="git-config.html" target="_top">git-config(1)</a> for details.)</p></div></div><div class="chapter" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title"><a name="exploring-git-history"></a>Chapter 2. Exploring git history</h2></div></div></div><div class="toc"><p><b>Table of Contents</b></p><dl><dt><span class="section"><a href="#using-bisect">How to use bisect to find a regression</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#naming-commits">Naming commits</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#creating-tags">Creating tags</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#browsing-revisions">Browsing revisions</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#generating-diffs">Generating diffs</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#viewing-old-file-versions">Viewing old file versions</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#history-examples">Examples</a></span></dt><dd><dl><dt><span class="section"><a href="#counting-commits-on-a-branch">Counting the number of commits on a branch</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#checking-for-equal-branches">Check whether two branches point at the same history</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#finding-tagged-descendants">Find first tagged version including a given fix</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#showing-commits-unique-to-a-branch">Showing commits unique to a given branch</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#making-a-release">Creating a changelog and tarball for a software release</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#Finding-comments-with-given-content">Finding commits referencing a file with given content</a></span></dt></dl></dd></dl></div><p>Git is best thought of as a tool for storing the history of a
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22228collection of files. It does this by storing compressed snapshots of
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43229the contents of a file hierarchy, together with "commits" which show
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22230the relationships between these snapshots.</p><p>Git provides extremely flexible and fast tools for exploring the
Junio C Hamano39381a72007-02-02 07:35:15231history of a project.</p><p>We start with one specialized tool that is useful for finding the
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:53232commit that introduced a bug into a project.</p><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="using-bisect"></a>How to use bisect to find a regression</h2></div></div></div><p>Suppose version 2.6.18 of your project worked, but the version at
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22233"master" crashes. Sometimes the best way to find the cause of such a
234regression is to perform a brute-force search through the project's
235history to find the particular commit that caused the problem. The
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31236<a class="ulink" href="git-bisect.html" target="_top">git-bisect(1)</a> command can help you do this:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git bisect start<br>
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43237$ git bisect good v2.6.18<br>
238$ git bisect bad master<br>
239Bisecting: 3537 revisions left to test after this<br>
240[65934a9a028b88e83e2b0f8b36618fe503349f8e] BLOCK: Make USB storage depend on SCSI rather than selecting it [try #6]</p></div><p>If you run "git branch" at this point, you'll see that git has
Junio C Hamano9e395072008-07-31 22:11:21241temporarily moved you in "(no branch)". HEAD is now detached from any
242branch and points directly to a commit (with commit id 65934…) that
243is reachable from "master" but not from v2.6.18. Compile and test it,
244and see whether it crashes. Assume it does crash. Then:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git bisect bad<br>
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43245Bisecting: 1769 revisions left to test after this<br>
246[7eff82c8b1511017ae605f0c99ac275a7e21b867] i2c-core: Drop useless bitmaskings</p></div><p>checks out an older version. Continue like this, telling git at each
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22247stage whether the version it gives you is good or bad, and notice
248that the number of revisions left to test is cut approximately in
249half each time.</p><p>After about 13 tests (in this case), it will output the commit id of
250the guilty commit. You can then examine the commit with
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31251<a class="ulink" href="git-show.html" target="_top">git-show(1)</a>, find out who wrote it, and mail them your bug
Junio C Hamano9e395072008-07-31 22:11:21252report with the commit id. Finally, run</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git bisect reset</p></div><p>to return you to the branch you were on before.</p><p>Note that the version which git-bisect checks out for you at each
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22253point is just a suggestion, and you're free to try a different
254version if you think it would be a good idea. For example,
255occasionally you may land on a commit that broke something unrelated;
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43256run</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git bisect visualize</p></div><p>which will run gitk and label the commit it chose with a marker that
Junio C Hamanod32738e2008-07-09 19:53:42257says "bisect". Choose a safe-looking commit nearby, note its commit
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43258id, and check it out with:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git reset --hard fb47ddb2db...</p></div><p>then test, run "bisect good" or "bisect bad" as appropriate, and
Junio C Hamano9e395072008-07-31 22:11:21259continue.</p><p>Instead of "git bisect visualize" and then "git reset —hard
260fb47ddb2db…", you might just want to tell git that you want to skip
261the current commit:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git bisect skip</p></div><p>In this case, though, git may not eventually be able to tell the first
262bad one between some first skipped commits and a latter bad commit.</p><p>There are also ways to automate the bisecting process if you have a
263test script that can tell a good from a bad commit. See
264<a class="ulink" href="git-bisect.html" target="_top">git-bisect(1)</a> for more information about this and other "git
265bisect" features.</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="naming-commits"></a>Naming commits</h2></div></div></div><p>We have seen several ways of naming commits already:</p><div class="itemizedlist"><ul type="disc"><li>
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:2226640-hexdigit object name
267</li><li>
268branch name: refers to the commit at the head of the given
269 branch
270</li><li>
271tag name: refers to the commit pointed to by the given tag
272 (we've seen branches and tags are special cases of
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31273 <a class="link" href="#how-git-stores-references" title="Naming branches, tags, and other references">references</a>).
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22274</li><li>
275HEAD: refers to the head of the current branch
276</li></ul></div><p>There are many more; see the "SPECIFYING REVISIONS" section of the
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31277<a class="ulink" href="git-rev-parse.html" target="_top">git-rev-parse(1)</a> man page for the complete list of ways to
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43278name revisions. Some examples:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git show fb47ddb2 # the first few characters of the object name<br>
279                    # are usually enough to specify it uniquely<br>
280$ git show HEAD^    # the parent of the HEAD commit<br>
281$ git show HEAD^^   # the grandparent<br>
282$ git show HEAD~4   # the great-great-grandparent</p></div><p>Recall that merge commits may have more than one parent; by default,
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22283^ and ~ follow the first parent listed in the commit, but you can
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43284also choose:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git show HEAD^1   # show the first parent of HEAD<br>
285$ git show HEAD^2   # show the second parent of HEAD</p></div><p>In addition to HEAD, there are several other special names for
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22286commits:</p><p>Merges (to be discussed later), as well as operations such as
287git-reset, which change the currently checked-out commit, generally
288set ORIG_HEAD to the value HEAD had before the current operation.</p><p>The git-fetch operation always stores the head of the last fetched
289branch in FETCH_HEAD. For example, if you run git fetch without
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43290specifying a local branch as the target of the operation</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git fetch git://example.com/proj.git theirbranch</p></div><p>the fetched commits will still be available from FETCH_HEAD.</p><p>When we discuss merges we'll also see the special name MERGE_HEAD,
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22291which refers to the other branch that we're merging in to the current
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31292branch.</p><p>The <a class="ulink" href="git-rev-parse.html" target="_top">git-rev-parse(1)</a> command is a low-level command that is
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22293occasionally useful for translating some name for a commit to the object
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43294name for that commit:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git rev-parse origin<br>
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:53295e05db0fd4f31dde7005f075a84f96b360d05984b</p></div></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="creating-tags"></a>Creating tags</h2></div></div></div><p>We can also create a tag to refer to a particular commit; after
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43296running</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git tag stable-1 1b2e1d63ff</p></div><p>You can use stable-1 to refer to the commit 1b2e1d63ff.</p><p>This creates a "lightweight" tag. If you would also like to include a
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:53297comment with the tag, and possibly sign it cryptographically, then you
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31298should create a tag object instead; see the <a class="ulink" href="git-tag.html" target="_top">git-tag(1)</a> man page
299for details.</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="browsing-revisions"></a>Browsing revisions</h2></div></div></div><p>The <a class="ulink" href="git-log.html" target="_top">git-log(1)</a> command can show lists of commits. On its
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22300own, it shows all commits reachable from the parent commit; but you
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43301can also make more specific requests:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git log v2.5..        # commits since (not reachable from) v2.5<br>
302$ git log test..master  # commits reachable from master but not test<br>
303$ git log master..test  # ...reachable from test but not master<br>
304$ git log master...test # ...reachable from either test or master,<br>
305                        #    but not both<br>
306$ git log --since="2 weeks ago" # commits from the last 2 weeks<br>
307$ git log Makefile      # commits which modify Makefile<br>
308$ git log fs/           # ... which modify any file under fs/<br>
309$ git log -S'foo()'     # commits which add or remove any file data<br>
310                        # matching the string 'foo()'</p></div><p>And of course you can combine all of these; the following finds
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31311commits since v2.5 which touch the Makefile or any file under fs:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git log v2.5.. Makefile fs/</p></div><p>You can also ask git log to show patches:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git log -p</p></div><p>See the "—pretty" option in the <a class="ulink" href="git-log.html" target="_top">git-log(1)</a> man page for more
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22312display options.</p><p>Note that git log starts with the most recent commit and works
313backwards through the parents; however, since git history can contain
Junio C Hamanoee1e4282007-02-04 08:32:04314multiple independent lines of development, the particular order that
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:53315commits are listed in may be somewhat arbitrary.</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="generating-diffs"></a>Generating diffs</h2></div></div></div><p>You can generate diffs between any two versions using
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31316<a class="ulink" href="git-diff.html" target="_top">git-diff(1)</a>:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git diff master..test</p></div><p>That will produce the diff between the tips of the two branches. If
Junio C Hamano393e57f2007-11-20 04:53:25317you'd prefer to find the diff from their common ancestor to test, you
318can use three dots instead of two:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git diff master...test</p></div><p>Sometimes what you want instead is a set of patches; for this you can
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31319use <a class="ulink" href="git-format-patch.html" target="_top">git-format-patch(1)</a>:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git format-patch master..test</p></div><p>will generate a file with a patch for each commit reachable from test
Junio C Hamano393e57f2007-11-20 04:53:25320but not from master.</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="viewing-old-file-versions"></a>Viewing old file versions</h2></div></div></div><p>You can always view an old version of a file by just checking out the
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22321correct revision first. But sometimes it is more convenient to be
322able to view an old version of a single file without checking
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43323anything out; this command does that:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git show v2.5:fs/locks.c</p></div><p>Before the colon may be anything that names a commit, and after it
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:33324may be any path to a file tracked by git.</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="history-examples"></a>Examples</h2></div></div></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a name="counting-commits-on-a-branch"></a>Counting the number of commits on a branch</h3></div></div></div><p>Suppose you want to know how many commits you've made on "mybranch"
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43325since it diverged from "origin":</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git log --pretty=oneline origin..mybranch | wc -l</p></div><p>Alternatively, you may often see this sort of thing done with the
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31326lower-level command <a class="ulink" href="git-rev-list.html" target="_top">git-rev-list(1)</a>, which just lists the SHA1's
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43327of all the given commits:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git rev-list origin..mybranch | wc -l</p></div></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a name="checking-for-equal-branches"></a>Check whether two branches point at the same history</h3></div></div></div><p>Suppose you want to check whether two branches point at the same point
328in history.</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git diff origin..master</p></div><p>will tell you whether the contents of the project are the same at the
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22329two branches; in theory, however, it's possible that the same project
330contents could have been arrived at by two different historical
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43331routes. You could compare the object names:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git rev-list origin<br>
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22332e05db0fd4f31dde7005f075a84f96b360d05984b<br>
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43333$ git rev-list master<br>
334e05db0fd4f31dde7005f075a84f96b360d05984b</p></div><p>Or you could recall that the … operator selects all commits
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22335contained reachable from either one reference or the other but not
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43336both: so</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git log origin...master</p></div><p>will return no commits when the two branches are equal.</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a name="finding-tagged-descendants"></a>Find first tagged version including a given fix</h3></div></div></div><p>Suppose you know that the commit e05db0fd fixed a certain problem.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22337You'd like to find the earliest tagged release that contains that
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43338fix.</p><p>Of course, there may be more than one answer—if the history branched
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22339after commit e05db0fd, then there could be multiple "earliest" tagged
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31340releases.</p><p>You could just visually inspect the commits since e05db0fd:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ gitk e05db0fd..</p></div><p>Or you can use <a class="ulink" href="git-name-rev.html" target="_top">git-name-rev(1)</a>, which will give the commit a
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22341name based on any tag it finds pointing to one of the commit's
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43342descendants:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git name-rev --tags e05db0fd<br>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31343e05db0fd tags/v1.5.0-rc1^0~23</p></div><p>The <a class="ulink" href="git-describe.html" target="_top">git-describe(1)</a> command does the opposite, naming the
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43344revision using a tag on which the given commit is based:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git describe e05db0fd<br>
Junio C Hamano4c6aa8a2007-04-04 08:56:37345v1.5.0-rc0-260-ge05db0f</p></div><p>but that may sometimes help you guess which tags might come after the
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22346given commit.</p><p>If you just want to verify whether a given tagged version contains a
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31347given commit, you could use <a class="ulink" href="git-merge-base.html" target="_top">git-merge-base(1)</a>:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git merge-base e05db0fd v1.5.0-rc1<br>
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22348e05db0fd4f31dde7005f075a84f96b360d05984b</p></div><p>The merge-base command finds a common ancestor of the given commits,
349and always returns one or the other in the case where one is a
350descendant of the other; so the above output shows that e05db0fd
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43351actually is an ancestor of v1.5.0-rc1.</p><p>Alternatively, note that</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git log v1.5.0-rc1..e05db0fd</p></div><p>will produce empty output if and only if v1.5.0-rc1 includes e05db0fd,
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31352because it outputs only commits that are not reachable from v1.5.0-rc1.</p><p>As yet another alternative, the <a class="ulink" href="git-show-branch.html" target="_top">git-show-branch(1)</a> command lists
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22353the commits reachable from its arguments with a display on the left-hand
354side that indicates which arguments that commit is reachable from. So,
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43355you can run something like</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git show-branch e05db0fd v1.5.0-rc0 v1.5.0-rc1 v1.5.0-rc2<br>
356! [e05db0fd] Fix warnings in sha1_file.c - use C99 printf format if<br>
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22357available<br>
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43358 ! [v1.5.0-rc0] GIT v1.5.0 preview<br>
359  ! [v1.5.0-rc1] GIT v1.5.0-rc1<br>
360   ! [v1.5.0-rc2] GIT v1.5.0-rc2<br>
361...</p></div><p>then search for a line that looks like</p><div class="literallayout"><p>+ ++ [e05db0fd] Fix warnings in sha1_file.c - use C99 printf format if<br>
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22362available</p></div><p>Which shows that e05db0fd is reachable from itself, from v1.5.0-rc1, and
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:33363from v1.5.0-rc2, but not from v1.5.0-rc0.</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a name="showing-commits-unique-to-a-branch"></a>Showing commits unique to a given branch</h3></div></div></div><p>Suppose you would like to see all the commits reachable from the branch
364head named "master" but not from any other head in your repository.</p><p>We can list all the heads in this repository with
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31365<a class="ulink" href="git-show-ref.html" target="_top">git-show-ref(1)</a>:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git show-ref --heads<br>
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43366bf62196b5e363d73353a9dcf094c59595f3153b7 refs/heads/core-tutorial<br>
367db768d5504c1bb46f63ee9d6e1772bd047e05bf9 refs/heads/maint<br>
368a07157ac624b2524a059a3414e99f6f44bebc1e7 refs/heads/master<br>
36924dbc180ea14dc1aebe09f14c8ecf32010690627 refs/heads/tutorial-2<br>
3701e87486ae06626c2f31eaa63d26fc0fd646c8af2 refs/heads/tutorial-fixes</p></div><p>We can get just the branch-head names, and remove "master", with
371the help of the standard utilities cut and grep:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git show-ref --heads | cut -d' ' -f2 | grep -v '^refs/heads/master'<br>
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:33372refs/heads/core-tutorial<br>
373refs/heads/maint<br>
374refs/heads/tutorial-2<br>
375refs/heads/tutorial-fixes</p></div><p>And then we can ask to see all the commits reachable from master
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43376but not from these other heads:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ gitk master --not $( git show-ref --heads | cut -d' ' -f2 |<br>
377                                grep -v '^refs/heads/master' )</p></div><p>Obviously, endless variations are possible; for example, to see all
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31378commits reachable from some head but not from any tag in the repository:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ gitk $( git show-ref --heads ) --not  $( git show-ref --tags )</p></div><p>(See <a class="ulink" href="git-rev-parse.html" target="_top">git-rev-parse(1)</a> for explanations of commit-selecting
379syntax such as <code class="literal">—not</code>.)</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a name="making-a-release"></a>Creating a changelog and tarball for a software release</h3></div></div></div><p>The <a class="ulink" href="git-archive.html" target="_top">git-archive(1)</a> command can create a tar or zip archive from
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43380any version of a project; for example:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git archive --format=tar --prefix=project/ HEAD | gzip &gt;latest.tar.gz</p></div><p>will use HEAD to produce a tar archive in which each filename is
Junio C Hamano2a8f6dc2007-07-09 08:48:38381preceded by "project/".</p><p>If you're releasing a new version of a software project, you may want
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:33382to simultaneously make a changelog to include in the release
383announcement.</p><p>Linus Torvalds, for example, makes new kernel releases by tagging them,
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43384then running:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ release-script 2.6.12 2.6.13-rc6 2.6.13-rc7</p></div><p>where release-script is a shell script that looks like:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>#!/bin/sh<br>
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:33385stable="$1"<br>
386last="$2"<br>
387new="$3"<br>
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43388echo "# git tag v$new"<br>
389echo "git archive --prefix=linux-$new/ v$new | gzip -9 &gt; ../linux-$new.tar.gz"<br>
390echo "git diff v$stable v$new | gzip -9 &gt; ../patch-$new.gz"<br>
391echo "git log --no-merges v$new ^v$last &gt; ../ChangeLog-$new"<br>
392echo "git shortlog --no-merges v$new ^v$last &gt; ../ShortLog"<br>
393echo "git diff --stat --summary -M v$last v$new &gt; ../diffstat-$new"</p></div><p>and then he just cut-and-pastes the output commands after verifying that
Junio C Hamano8b8b0f22007-08-26 22:10:26394they look OK.</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a name="Finding-comments-with-given-content"></a>Finding commits referencing a file with given content</h3></div></div></div><p>Somebody hands you a copy of a file, and asks which commits modified a
Junio C Hamanoed7f4f62007-05-20 09:09:09395file such that it contained the given content either before or after the
Junio C Hamano764a6672007-10-23 01:23:31396commit. You can find out with this:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$  git log --raw --abbrev=40 --pretty=oneline |<br>
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43397        grep -B 1 `git hash-object filename`</p></div><p>Figuring out why this works is left as an exercise to the (advanced)
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31398student. The <a class="ulink" href="git-log.html" target="_top">git-log(1)</a>, <a class="ulink" href="git-diff-tree.html" target="_top">git-diff-tree(1)</a>, and
399<a class="ulink" href="git-hash-object.html" target="_top">git-hash-object(1)</a> man pages may prove helpful.</p></div></div></div><div class="chapter" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title"><a name="Developing-with-git"></a>Chapter 3. Developing with git</h2></div></div></div><div class="toc"><p><b>Table of Contents</b></p><dl><dt><span class="section"><a href="#telling-git-your-name">Telling git your name</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#creating-a-new-repository">Creating a new repository</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#how-to-make-a-commit">How to make a commit</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#creating-good-commit-messages">Creating good commit messages</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#ignoring-files">Ignoring files</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#how-to-merge">How to merge</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#resolving-a-merge">Resolving a merge</a></span></dt><dd><dl><dt><span class="section"><a href="#conflict-resolution">Getting conflict-resolution help during a merge</a></span></dt></dl></dd><dt><span class="section"><a href="#undoing-a-merge">Undoing a merge</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#fast-forwards">Fast-forward merges</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#fixing-mistakes">Fixing mistakes</a></span></dt><dd><dl><dt><span class="section"><a href="#reverting-a-commit">Fixing a mistake with a new commit</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#fixing-a-mistake-by-rewriting-history">Fixing a mistake by rewriting history</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#checkout-of-path">Checking out an old version of a file</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#interrupted-work">Temporarily setting aside work in progress</a></span></dt></dl></dd><dt><span class="section"><a href="#ensuring-good-performance">Ensuring good performance</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#ensuring-reliability">Ensuring reliability</a></span></dt><dd><dl><dt><span class="section"><a href="#checking-for-corruption">Checking the repository for corruption</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#recovering-lost-changes">Recovering lost changes</a></span></dt></dl></dd></dl></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="telling-git-your-name"></a>Telling git your name</h2></div></div></div><p>Before creating any commits, you should introduce yourself to git. The
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:53400easiest way to do so is to make sure the following lines appear in a
401file named .gitconfig in your home directory:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>[user]<br>
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43402        name = Your Name Comes Here<br>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31403        email = you@yourdomain.example.com</p></div><p>(See the "CONFIGURATION FILE" section of <a class="ulink" href="git-config.html" target="_top">git-config(1)</a> for
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43404details on the configuration file.)</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="creating-a-new-repository"></a>Creating a new repository</h2></div></div></div><p>Creating a new repository from scratch is very easy:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ mkdir project<br>
405$ cd project<br>
406$ git init</p></div><p>If you have some initial content (say, a tarball):</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ tar -xzvf project.tar.gz<br>
407$ cd project<br>
408$ git init<br>
409$ git add . # include everything below ./ in the first commit:<br>
410$ git commit</p></div></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="how-to-make-a-commit"></a>How to make a commit</h2></div></div></div><p>Creating a new commit takes three steps:</p><div class="orderedlist"><ol type="1"><li>
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22411Making some changes to the working directory using your
412 favorite editor.
413</li><li>
414Telling git about your changes.
415</li><li>
416Creating the commit using the content you told git about
417 in step 2.
418</li></ol></div><p>In practice, you can interleave and repeat steps 1 and 2 as many
419times as you want: in order to keep track of what you want committed
420at step 3, git maintains a snapshot of the tree's contents in a
421special staging area called "the index."</p><p>At the beginning, the content of the index will be identical to
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43422that of the HEAD. The command "git diff —cached", which shows
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22423the difference between the HEAD and the index, should therefore
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43424produce no output at that point.</p><p>Modifying the index is easy:</p><p>To update the index with the new contents of a modified file, use</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git add path/to/file</p></div><p>To add the contents of a new file to the index, use</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git add path/to/file</p></div><p>To remove a file from the index and from the working tree,</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git rm path/to/file</p></div><p>After each step you can verify that</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git diff --cached</p></div><p>always shows the difference between the HEAD and the index file—this
Junio C Hamanofce7c7e2008-07-02 03:06:38425is what you'd commit if you created the commit now—and that</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git diff</p></div><p>shows the difference between the working tree and the index file.</p><p>Note that "git-add" always adds just the current contents of a file
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22426to the index; further changes to the same file will be ignored unless
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43427you run git-add on the file again.</p><p>When you're ready, just run</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git commit</p></div><p>and git will prompt you for a commit message and then create the new
428commit. Check to make sure it looks like what you expected with</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git show</p></div><p>As a special shortcut,</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git commit -a</p></div><p>will update the index with any files that you've modified or removed
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22429and create a commit, all in one step.</p><p>A number of commands are useful for keeping track of what you're
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43430about to commit:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git diff --cached # difference between HEAD and the index; what<br>
431                    # would be committed if you ran "commit" now.<br>
432$ git diff          # difference between the index file and your<br>
433                    # working directory; changes that would not<br>
434                    # be included if you ran "commit" now.<br>
435$ git diff HEAD     # difference between HEAD and working tree; what<br>
436                    # would be committed if you ran "commit -a" now.<br>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31437$ git status        # a brief per-file summary of the above.</p></div><p>You can also use <a class="ulink" href="git-gui.html" target="_top">git-gui(1)</a> to create commits, view changes in
Junio C Hamano4cd1c0e2007-08-06 04:39:14438the index and the working tree files, and individually select diff hunks
439for inclusion in the index (by right-clicking on the diff hunk and
440choosing "Stage Hunk For Commit").</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="creating-good-commit-messages"></a>Creating good commit messages</h2></div></div></div><p>Though not required, it's a good idea to begin the commit message
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22441with a single short (less than 50 character) line summarizing the
442change, followed by a blank line and then a more thorough
443description. Tools that turn commits into email, for example, use
444the first line on the Subject line and the rest of the commit in the
Junio C Hamanoed7f4f62007-05-20 09:09:09445body.</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="ignoring-files"></a>Ignoring files</h2></div></div></div><p>A project will often generate files that you do <span class="emphasis"><em>not</em></span> want to track with git.
446This typically includes files generated by a build process or temporary
447backup files made by your editor. Of course, <span class="emphasis"><em>not</em></span> tracking files with git
Junio C Hamanofce7c7e2008-07-02 03:06:38448is just a matter of <span class="emphasis"><em>not</em></span> calling "<code class="literal">git-add</code>" on them. But it quickly becomes
Junio C Hamanoed7f4f62007-05-20 09:09:09449annoying to have these untracked files lying around; e.g. they make
450"<code class="literal">git add .</code>" and "<code class="literal">git commit -a</code>" practically useless, and they keep
Junio C Hamano8b8b0f22007-08-26 22:10:26451showing up in the output of "<code class="literal">git status</code>".</p><p>You can tell git to ignore certain files by creating a file called .gitignore
452in the top level of your working directory, with contents such as:</p><div class="literallayout"><p># Lines starting with '#' are considered comments.<br>
453# Ignore any file named foo.txt.<br>
Junio C Hamanoed7f4f62007-05-20 09:09:09454foo.txt<br>
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43455# Ignore (generated) html files,<br>
Junio C Hamanoed7f4f62007-05-20 09:09:09456*.html<br>
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43457# except foo.html which is maintained by hand.<br>
Junio C Hamanoed7f4f62007-05-20 09:09:09458!foo.html<br>
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43459# Ignore objects and archives.<br>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31460*.[oa]</p></div><p>See <a class="ulink" href="gitignore.html" target="_top">gitignore(5)</a> for a detailed explanation of the syntax. You can
Junio C Hamano8b8b0f22007-08-26 22:10:26461also place .gitignore files in other directories in your working tree, and they
462will apply to those directories and their subdirectories. The <code class="literal">.gitignore</code>
463files can be added to your repository like any other files (just run <code class="literal">git add
464.gitignore</code> and <code class="literal">git commit</code>, as usual), which is convenient when the exclude
465patterns (such as patterns matching build output files) would also make sense
466for other users who clone your repository.</p><p>If you wish the exclude patterns to affect only certain repositories
467(instead of every repository for a given project), you may instead put
468them in a file in your repository named .git/info/exclude, or in any file
469specified by the <code class="literal">core.excludesfile</code> configuration variable. Some git
470commands can also take exclude patterns directly on the command line.
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31471See <a class="ulink" href="gitignore.html" target="_top">gitignore(5)</a> for the details.</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="how-to-merge"></a>How to merge</h2></div></div></div><p>You can rejoin two diverging branches of development using
472<a class="ulink" href="git-merge.html" target="_top">git-merge(1)</a>:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git merge branchname</p></div><p>merges the development in the branch "branchname" into the current
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43473branch. If there are conflicts—for example, if the same file is
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22474modified in two different ways in the remote branch and the local
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43475branch—then you are warned; the output may look something like this:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git merge next<br>
476 100% (4/4) done<br>
477Auto-merged file.txt<br>
478CONFLICT (content): Merge conflict in file.txt<br>
479Automatic merge failed; fix conflicts and then commit the result.</p></div><p>Conflict markers are left in the problematic files, and after
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22480you resolve the conflicts manually, you can update the index
481with the contents and run git commit, as you normally would when
482creating a new file.</p><p>If you examine the resulting commit using gitk, you will see that it
483has two parents, one pointing to the top of the current branch, and
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:53484one to the top of the other branch.</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="resolving-a-merge"></a>Resolving a merge</h2></div></div></div><p>When a merge isn't resolved automatically, git leaves the index and
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22485the working tree in a special state that gives you all the
486information you need to help resolve the merge.</p><p>Files with conflicts are marked specially in the index, so until you
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31487resolve the problem and update the index, <a class="ulink" href="git-commit.html" target="_top">git-commit(1)</a> will
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43488fail:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git commit<br>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31489file.txt: needs merge</p></div><p>Also, <a class="ulink" href="git-status.html" target="_top">git-status(1)</a> will list those files as "unmerged", and the
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43490files with conflicts will have conflict markers added, like this:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>&lt;&lt;&lt;&lt;&lt;&lt;&lt; HEAD:file.txt<br>
491Hello world<br>
Junio C Hamanoaa83a7d2007-03-05 02:37:29492=======<br>
493Goodbye<br>
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43494&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; 77976da35a11db4580b80ae27e8d65caf5208086:file.txt</p></div><p>All you need to do is edit the files to resolve the conflicts, and then</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git add file.txt<br>
495$ git commit</p></div><p>Note that the commit message will already be filled in for you with
Junio C Hamanoaa83a7d2007-03-05 02:37:29496some information about the merge. Normally you can just use this
497default message unchanged, but you may add additional commentary of
498your own if desired.</p><p>The above is all you need to know to resolve a simple merge. But git
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:53499also provides more information to help resolve conflicts:</p><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a name="conflict-resolution"></a>Getting conflict-resolution help during a merge</h3></div></div></div><p>All of the changes that git was able to merge automatically are
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31500already added to the index file, so <a class="ulink" href="git-diff.html" target="_top">git-diff(1)</a> shows only
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43501the conflicts. It uses an unusual syntax:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git diff<br>
502diff --cc file.txt<br>
503index 802992c,2b60207..0000000<br>
504--- a/file.txt<br>
505+++ b/file.txt<br>
506@@@ -1,1 -1,1 +1,5 @@@<br>
507++&lt;&lt;&lt;&lt;&lt;&lt;&lt; HEAD:file.txt<br>
508 +Hello world<br>
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22509++=======<br>
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43510+ Goodbye<br>
511++&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; 77976da35a11db4580b80ae27e8d65caf5208086:file.txt</p></div><p>Recall that the commit which will be committed after we resolve this
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22512conflict will have two parents instead of the usual one: one parent
513will be HEAD, the tip of the current branch; the other will be the
Junio C Hamanoaa83a7d2007-03-05 02:37:29514tip of the other branch, which is stored temporarily in MERGE_HEAD.</p><p>During the merge, the index holds three versions of each file. Each of
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43515these three "file stages" represents a different version of the file:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git show :1:file.txt  # the file in a common ancestor of both branches<br>
Junio C Hamano6fb124c2008-06-13 10:04:01516$ git show :2:file.txt  # the version from HEAD.<br>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31517$ git show :3:file.txt  # the version from MERGE_HEAD.</p></div><p>When you ask <a class="ulink" href="git-diff.html" target="_top">git-diff(1)</a> to show the conflicts, it runs a
Junio C Hamano6fb124c2008-06-13 10:04:01518three-way diff between the conflicted merge results in the work tree with
519stages 2 and 3 to show only hunks whose contents come from both sides,
520mixed (in other words, when a hunk's merge results come only from stage 2,
521that part is not conflicting and is not shown. Same for stage 3).</p><p>The diff above shows the differences between the working-tree version of
Junio C Hamanoaa83a7d2007-03-05 02:37:29522file.txt and the stage 2 and stage 3 versions. So instead of preceding
523each line by a single "+" or "-", it now uses two columns: the first
524column is used for differences between the first parent and the working
525directory copy, and the second for differences between the second parent
526and the working directory copy. (See the "COMBINED DIFF FORMAT" section
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31527of <a class="ulink" href="git-diff-files.html" target="_top">git-diff-files(1)</a> for a details of the format.)</p><p>After resolving the conflict in the obvious way (but before updating the
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43528index), the diff will look like:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git diff<br>
529diff --cc file.txt<br>
530index 802992c,2b60207..0000000<br>
531--- a/file.txt<br>
532+++ b/file.txt<br>
533@@@ -1,1 -1,1 +1,1 @@@<br>
534- Hello world<br>
535 -Goodbye<br>
536++Goodbye world</p></div><p>This shows that our resolved version deleted "Hello world" from the
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22537first parent, deleted "Goodbye" from the second parent, and added
Junio C Hamanoaa83a7d2007-03-05 02:37:29538"Goodbye world", which was previously absent from both.</p><p>Some special diff options allow diffing the working directory against
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43539any of these stages:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git diff -1 file.txt          # diff against stage 1<br>
540$ git diff --base file.txt      # same as the above<br>
541$ git diff -2 file.txt          # diff against stage 2<br>
542$ git diff --ours file.txt      # same as the above<br>
543$ git diff -3 file.txt          # diff against stage 3<br>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31544$ git diff --theirs file.txt    # same as the above.</p></div><p>The <a class="ulink" href="git-log.html" target="_top">git-log(1)</a> and <a class="ulink" href="gitk.html" target="_top">gitk(1)</a> commands also provide special help
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43545for merges:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git log --merge<br>
546$ gitk --merge</p></div><p>These will display all commits which exist only on HEAD or on
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31547MERGE_HEAD, and which touch an unmerged file.</p><p>You may also use <a class="ulink" href="git-mergetool.html" target="_top">git-mergetool(1)</a>, which lets you merge the
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43548unmerged files using external tools such as emacs or kdiff3.</p><p>Each time you resolve the conflicts in a file and update the index:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git add file.txt</p></div><p>the different stages of that file will be "collapsed", after which
Junio C Hamano12a3a232007-04-07 10:18:10549git-diff will (by default) no longer show diffs for that file.</p></div></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="undoing-a-merge"></a>Undoing a merge</h2></div></div></div><p>If you get stuck and decide to just give up and throw the whole mess
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43550away, you can always return to the pre-merge state with</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git reset --hard HEAD</p></div><p>Or, if you've already committed the merge that you want to throw away,</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git reset --hard ORIG_HEAD</p></div><p>However, this last command can be dangerous in some cases—never
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22551throw away a commit you have already committed if that commit may
552itself have been merged into another branch, as doing so may confuse
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:53553further merges.</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="fast-forwards"></a>Fast-forward merges</h2></div></div></div><p>There is one special case not mentioned above, which is treated
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22554differently. Normally, a merge results in a merge commit, with two
555parents, one pointing at each of the two lines of development that
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43556were merged.</p><p>However, if the current branch is a descendant of the other—so every
557commit present in the one is already contained in the other—then git
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:53558just performs a "fast forward"; the head of the current branch is moved
559forward to point at the head of the merged-in branch, without any new
560commits being created.</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="fixing-mistakes"></a>Fixing mistakes</h2></div></div></div><p>If you've messed up the working tree, but haven't yet committed your
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22561mistake, you can return the entire working tree to the last committed
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43562state with</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git reset --hard HEAD</p></div><p>If you make a commit that you later wish you hadn't, there are two
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22563fundamentally different ways to fix the problem:</p><div class="orderedlist"><ol type="1"><li>
564You can create a new commit that undoes whatever was done
Junio C Hamano8c5802d2007-11-15 00:13:36565 by the old commit. This is the correct thing if your
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22566 mistake has already been made public.
567</li><li>
568You can go back and modify the old commit. You should
569 never do this if you have already made the history public;
570 git does not normally expect the "history" of a project to
571 change, and cannot correctly perform repeated merges from
572 a branch that has had its history changed.
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:53573</li></ol></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a name="reverting-a-commit"></a>Fixing a mistake with a new commit</h3></div></div></div><p>Creating a new commit that reverts an earlier change is very easy;
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31574just pass the <a class="ulink" href="git-revert.html" target="_top">git-revert(1)</a> command a reference to the bad
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43575commit; for example, to revert the most recent commit:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git revert HEAD</p></div><p>This will create a new commit which undoes the change in HEAD. You
576will be given a chance to edit the commit message for the new commit.</p><p>You can also revert an earlier change, for example, the next-to-last:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git revert HEAD^</p></div><p>In this case git will attempt to undo the old change while leaving
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22577intact any changes made since then. If more recent changes overlap
578with the changes to be reverted, then you will be asked to fix
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31579conflicts manually, just as in the case of <a class="link" href="#resolving-a-merge" title="Resolving a merge">resolving a merge</a>.</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a name="fixing-a-mistake-by-rewriting-history"></a>Fixing a mistake by rewriting history</h3></div></div></div><p>If the problematic commit is the most recent commit, and you have not
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22580yet made that commit public, then you may just
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31581<a class="link" href="#undoing-a-merge" title="Undoing a merge">destroy it using git-reset</a>.</p><p>Alternatively, you
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22582can edit the working directory and update the index to fix your
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31583mistake, just as if you were going to <a class="link" href="#how-to-make-a-commit" title="How to make a commit">create a new commit</a>, then run</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git commit --amend</p></div><p>which will replace the old commit by a new commit incorporating your
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22584changes, giving you a chance to edit the old commit message first.</p><p>Again, you should never do this to a commit that may already have
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31585been merged into another branch; use <a class="ulink" href="git-revert.html" target="_top">git-revert(1)</a> instead in
Junio C Hamanoce3650e2007-11-26 04:20:11586that case.</p><p>It is also possible to replace commits further back in the history, but
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22587this is an advanced topic to be left for
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31588<a class="link" href="#cleaning-up-history" title="Chapter 5. Rewriting history and maintaining patch series">another chapter</a>.</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a name="checkout-of-path"></a>Checking out an old version of a file</h3></div></div></div><p>In the process of undoing a previous bad change, you may find it
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22589useful to check out an older version of a particular file using
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31590<a class="ulink" href="git-checkout.html" target="_top">git-checkout(1)</a>. We've used git-checkout before to switch
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22591branches, but it has quite different behavior if it is given a path
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43592name: the command</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git checkout HEAD^ path/to/file</p></div><p>replaces path/to/file by the contents it had in the commit HEAD^, and
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22593also updates the index to match. It does not change branches.</p><p>If you just want to look at an old version of the file, without
594modifying the working directory, you can do that with
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31595<a class="ulink" href="git-show.html" target="_top">git-show(1)</a>:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git show HEAD^:path/to/file</p></div><p>which will display the given version of the file.</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a name="interrupted-work"></a>Temporarily setting aside work in progress</h3></div></div></div><p>While you are in the middle of working on something complicated, you
Junio C Hamano4cd1c0e2007-08-06 04:39:14596find an unrelated but obvious and trivial bug. You would like to fix it
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31597before continuing. You can use <a class="ulink" href="git-stash.html" target="_top">git-stash(1)</a> to save the current
Junio C Hamano4cd1c0e2007-08-06 04:39:14598state of your work, and after fixing the bug (or, optionally after doing
599so on a different branch and then coming back), unstash the
600work-in-progress changes.</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git stash "work in progress for foo feature"</p></div><p>This command will save your changes away to the <code class="literal">stash</code>, and
601reset your working tree and the index to match the tip of your
602current branch. Then you can make your fix as usual.</p><div class="literallayout"><p>... edit and test ...<br>
603$ git commit -a -m "blorpl: typofix"</p></div><p>After that, you can go back to what you were working on with
604<code class="literal">git stash apply</code>:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git stash apply</p></div></div></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="ensuring-good-performance"></a>Ensuring good performance</h2></div></div></div><p>On large repositories, git depends on compression to keep the history
Junio C Hamano764a6672007-10-23 01:23:31605information from taking up too much space on disk or in memory.</p><p>This compression is not performed automatically. Therefore you
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31606should occasionally run <a class="ulink" href="git-gc.html" target="_top">git-gc(1)</a>:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git gc</p></div><p>to recompress the archive. This can be very time-consuming, so
607you may prefer to run git-gc when you are not doing other work.</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="ensuring-reliability"></a>Ensuring reliability</h2></div></div></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a name="checking-for-corruption"></a>Checking the repository for corruption</h3></div></div></div><p>The <a class="ulink" href="git-fsck.html" target="_top">git-fsck(1)</a> command runs a number of self-consistency checks
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22608on the repository, and reports on any problems. This may take some
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43609time. The most common warning by far is about "dangling" objects:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git fsck<br>
610dangling commit 7281251ddd2a61e38657c827739c57015671a6b3<br>
611dangling commit 2706a059f258c6b245f298dc4ff2ccd30ec21a63<br>
612dangling commit 13472b7c4b80851a1bc551779171dcb03655e9b5<br>
613dangling blob 218761f9d90712d37a9c5e36f406f92202db07eb<br>
614dangling commit bf093535a34a4d35731aa2bd90fe6b176302f14f<br>
615dangling commit 8e4bec7f2ddaa268bef999853c25755452100f8e<br>
616dangling tree d50bb86186bf27b681d25af89d3b5b68382e4085<br>
617dangling tree b24c2473f1fd3d91352a624795be026d64c8841f<br>
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:53618...</p></div><p>Dangling objects are not a problem. At worst they may take up a little
Junio C Hamano2a8f6dc2007-07-09 08:48:38619extra disk space. They can sometimes provide a last-resort method for
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31620recovering lost work—see <a class="xref" href="#dangling-objects" title="Dangling objects">the section called “Dangling objects”</a> for details.</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a name="recovering-lost-changes"></a>Recovering lost changes</h3></div></div></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h4 class="title"><a name="reflogs"></a>Reflogs</h4></div></div></div><p>Say you modify a branch with <code class="literal"><a class="ulink" href="git-reset.html" target="_top">git-reset(1)</a> —hard</code>, and then
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22621realize that the branch was the only reference you had to that point in
622history.</p><p>Fortunately, git also keeps a log, called a "reflog", of all the
623previous values of each branch. So in this case you can still find the
Junio C Hamano63777e22007-11-17 20:52:16624old history using, for example,</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git log master@{1}</p></div><p>This lists the commits reachable from the previous version of the
625"master" branch head. This syntax can be used with any git command
626that accepts a commit, not just with git log. Some other examples:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git show master@{2}           # See where the branch pointed 2,<br>
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43627$ git show master@{3}           # 3, ... changes ago.<br>
628$ gitk master@{yesterday}       # See where it pointed yesterday,<br>
629$ gitk master@{"1 week ago"}    # ... or last week<br>
630$ git log --walk-reflogs master # show reflog entries for master</p></div><p>A separate reflog is kept for the HEAD, so</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git show HEAD@{"1 week ago"}</p></div><p>will show what HEAD pointed to one week ago, not what the current branch
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:53631pointed to one week ago. This allows you to see the history of what
632you've checked out.</p><p>The reflogs are kept by default for 30 days, after which they may be
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31633pruned. See <a class="ulink" href="git-reflog.html" target="_top">git-reflog(1)</a> and <a class="ulink" href="git-gc.html" target="_top">git-gc(1)</a> to learn
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22634how to control this pruning, and see the "SPECIFYING REVISIONS"
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31635section of <a class="ulink" href="git-rev-parse.html" target="_top">git-rev-parse(1)</a> for details.</p><p>Note that the reflog history is very different from normal git history.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22636While normal history is shared by every repository that works on the
637same project, the reflog history is not shared: it tells you only about
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:53638how the branches in your local repository have changed over time.</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h4 class="title"><a name="dangling-object-recovery"></a>Examining dangling objects</h4></div></div></div><p>In some situations the reflog may not be able to save you. For example,
639suppose you delete a branch, then realize you need the history it
640contained. The reflog is also deleted; however, if you have not yet
641pruned the repository, then you may still be able to find the lost
642commits in the dangling objects that git-fsck reports. See
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31643<a class="xref" href="#dangling-objects" title="Dangling objects">the section called “Dangling objects”</a> for the details.</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git fsck<br>
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43644dangling commit 7281251ddd2a61e38657c827739c57015671a6b3<br>
645dangling commit 2706a059f258c6b245f298dc4ff2ccd30ec21a63<br>
646dangling commit 13472b7c4b80851a1bc551779171dcb03655e9b5<br>
Junio C Hamano39381a72007-02-02 07:35:15647...</p></div><p>You can examine
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43648one of those dangling commits with, for example,</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ gitk 7281251ddd --not --all</p></div><p>which does what it sounds like: it says that you want to see the commit
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22649history that is described by the dangling commit(s), but not the
650history that is described by all your existing branches and tags. Thus
651you get exactly the history reachable from that commit that is lost.
652(And notice that it might not be just one commit: we only report the
653"tip of the line" as being dangling, but there might be a whole deep
Junio C Hamanodb911ee2007-02-28 08:13:52654and complex commit history that was dropped.)</p><p>If you decide you want the history back, you can always create a new
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43655reference pointing to it, for example, a new branch:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git branch recovered-branch 7281251ddd</p></div><p>Other types of dangling objects (blobs and trees) are also possible, and
Junio C Hamanofce7c7e2008-07-02 03:06:38656dangling objects can arise in other situations.</p></div></div></div></div><div class="chapter" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title"><a name="sharing-development"></a>Chapter 4. Sharing development with others</h2></div></div></div><div class="toc"><p><b>Table of Contents</b></p><dl><dt><span class="section"><a href="#getting-updates-with-git-pull">Getting updates with git-pull</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#submitting-patches">Submitting patches to a project</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#importing-patches">Importing patches to a project</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#public-repositories">Public git repositories</a></span></dt><dd><dl><dt><span class="section"><a href="#setting-up-a-public-repository">Setting up a public repository</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#exporting-via-git">Exporting a git repository via the git protocol</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#exporting-via-http">Exporting a git repository via http</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#pushing-changes-to-a-public-repository">Pushing changes to a public repository</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#forcing-push">What to do when a push fails</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#setting-up-a-shared-repository">Setting up a shared repository</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#setting-up-gitweb">Allowing web browsing of a repository</a></span></dt></dl></dd><dt><span class="section"><a href="#sharing-development-examples">Examples</a></span></dt><dd><dl><dt><span class="section"><a href="#maintaining-topic-branches">Maintaining topic branches for a Linux subsystem maintainer</a></span></dt></dl></dd></dl></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="getting-updates-with-git-pull"></a>Getting updates with git-pull</h2></div></div></div><p>After you clone a repository and make a few changes of your own, you
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22657may wish to check the original repository for updates and merge them
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31658into your own work.</p><p>We have already seen <a class="link" href="#Updating-a-repository-with-git-fetch" title="Updating a repository with git-fetch">how to keep remote tracking branches up to date</a> with <a class="ulink" href="git-fetch.html" target="_top">git-fetch(1)</a>,
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22659and how to merge two branches. So you can merge in changes from the
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43660original repository's master branch with:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git fetch<br>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31661$ git merge origin/master</p></div><p>However, the <a class="ulink" href="git-pull.html" target="_top">git-pull(1)</a> command provides a way to do this in
Junio C Hamano4cd1c0e2007-08-06 04:39:14662one step:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git pull origin master</p></div><p>In fact, if you have "master" checked out, then by default "git pull"
663merges from the HEAD branch of the origin repository. So often you can
664accomplish the above with just a simple</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git pull</p></div><p>More generally, a branch that is created from a remote branch will pull
665by default from that branch. See the descriptions of the
666branch.&lt;name&gt;.remote and branch.&lt;name&gt;.merge options in
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31667<a class="ulink" href="git-config.html" target="_top">git-config(1)</a>, and the discussion of the <code class="literal">—track</code> option in
668<a class="ulink" href="git-checkout.html" target="_top">git-checkout(1)</a>, to learn how to control these defaults.</p><p>In addition to saving you keystrokes, "git pull" also helps you by
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22669producing a default commit message documenting the branch and
670repository that you pulled from.</p><p>(But note that no such commit will be created in the case of a
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31671<a class="link" href="#fast-forwards" title="Fast-forward merges">fast forward</a>; instead, your branch will just be
Junio C Hamanodb911ee2007-02-28 08:13:52672updated to point to the latest commit from the upstream branch.)</p><p>The git-pull command can also be given "." as the "remote" repository,
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22673in which case it just merges in a branch from the current repository; so
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43674the commands</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git pull . branch<br>
675$ git merge branch</p></div><p>are roughly equivalent. The former is actually very commonly used.</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="submitting-patches"></a>Submitting patches to a project</h2></div></div></div><p>If you just have a few changes, the simplest way to submit them may
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31676just be to send them as patches in email:</p><p>First, use <a class="ulink" href="git-format-patch.html" target="_top">git-format-patch(1)</a>; for example:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git format-patch origin</p></div><p>will produce a numbered series of files in the current directory, one
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22677for each patch in the current branch but not in origin/HEAD.</p><p>You can then import these into your mail client and send them by
678hand. However, if you have a lot to send at once, you may prefer to
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31679use the <a class="ulink" href="git-send-email.html" target="_top">git-send-email(1)</a> script to automate the process.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22680Consult the mailing list for your project first to determine how they
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31681prefer such patches be handled.</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="importing-patches"></a>Importing patches to a project</h2></div></div></div><p>Git also provides a tool called <a class="ulink" href="git-am.html" target="_top">git-am(1)</a> (am stands for
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22682"apply mailbox"), for importing such an emailed series of patches.
683Just save all of the patch-containing messages, in order, into a
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43684single mailbox file, say "patches.mbox", then run</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git am -3 patches.mbox</p></div><p>Git will apply each patch in order; if any conflicts are found, it
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22685will stop, and you can fix the conflicts as described in
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31686"<a class="link" href="#resolving-a-merge" title="Resolving a merge">Resolving a merge</a>". (The "-3" option tells
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22687git to perform a merge; if you would prefer it just to abort and
688leave your tree and index untouched, you may omit that option.)</p><p>Once the index is updated with the results of the conflict
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43689resolution, instead of creating a new commit, just run</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git am --resolved</p></div><p>and git will create the commit for you and continue applying the
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22690remaining patches from the mailbox.</p><p>The final result will be a series of commits, one for each patch in
691the original mailbox, with authorship and commit log message each
Junio C Hamano8b8b0f22007-08-26 22:10:26692taken from the message containing each patch.</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="public-repositories"></a>Public git repositories</h2></div></div></div><p>Another way to submit changes to a project is to tell the maintainer
693of that project to pull the changes from your repository using
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31694<a class="ulink" href="git-pull.html" target="_top">git-pull(1)</a>. In the section "<a class="link" href="#getting-updates-with-git-pull" title="Getting updates with git-pull">Getting updates with git-pull</a>" we described this as a way to get
Junio C Hamano8b8b0f22007-08-26 22:10:26695updates from the "main" repository, but it works just as well in the
696other direction.</p><p>If you and the maintainer both have accounts on the same machine, then
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:33697you can just pull changes from each other's repositories directly;
Junio C Hamano2a8f6dc2007-07-09 08:48:38698commands that accept repository URLs as arguments will also accept a
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43699local directory name:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git clone /path/to/repository<br>
Junio C Hamano764a6672007-10-23 01:23:31700$ git pull /path/to/other/repository</p></div><p>or an ssh URL:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git clone ssh://yourhost/~you/repository</p></div><p>For projects with few developers, or for synchronizing a few private
Junio C Hamano2a8f6dc2007-07-09 08:48:38701repositories, this may be all you need.</p><p>However, the more common way to do this is to maintain a separate public
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:33702repository (usually on a different host) for others to pull changes
703from. This is usually more convenient, and allows you to cleanly
704separate private work in progress from publicly visible work.</p><p>You will continue to do your day-to-day work in your personal
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22705repository, but periodically "push" changes from your personal
706repository into your public repository, allowing other developers to
707pull from that repository. So the flow of changes, in a situation
708where there is one other developer with a public repository, looks
709like this:</p><pre class="literallayout"> you push
710your personal repo ------------------&gt; your public repo
711 ^ |
712 | |
713 | you pull | they pull
714 | |
715 | |
716 | they push V
Junio C Hamano2a8f6dc2007-07-09 08:48:38717their public repo &lt;------------------- their repo</pre><p>We explain how to do this in the following sections.</p><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a name="setting-up-a-public-repository"></a>Setting up a public repository</h3></div></div></div><p>Assume your personal repository is in the directory ~/proj. We
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:33718first create a new clone of the repository and tell git-daemon that it
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43719is meant to be public:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git clone --bare ~/proj proj.git<br>
720$ touch proj.git/git-daemon-export-ok</p></div><p>The resulting directory proj.git contains a "bare" git repository—it is
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:33721just the contents of the ".git" directory, without any files checked out
722around it.</p><p>Next, copy proj.git to the server where you plan to host the
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22723public repository. You can use scp, rsync, or whatever is most
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:33724convenient.</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a name="exporting-via-git"></a>Exporting a git repository via the git protocol</h3></div></div></div><p>This is the preferred method.</p><p>If someone else administers the server, they should tell you what
Junio C Hamano764a6672007-10-23 01:23:31725directory to put the repository in, and what git:// URL it will appear
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:33726at. You can then skip to the section
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31727"<a class="link" href="#pushing-changes-to-a-public-repository" title="Pushing changes to a public repository">Pushing changes to a public repository</a>", below.</p><p>Otherwise, all you need to do is start <a class="ulink" href="git-daemon.html" target="_top">git-daemon(1)</a>; it will
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:33728listen on port 9418. By default, it will allow access to any directory
729that looks like a git directory and contains the magic file
730git-daemon-export-ok. Passing some directory paths as git-daemon
731arguments will further restrict the exports to those paths.</p><p>You can also run git-daemon as an inetd service; see the
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31732<a class="ulink" href="git-daemon.html" target="_top">git-daemon(1)</a> man page for details. (See especially the
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:33733examples section.)</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a name="exporting-via-http"></a>Exporting a git repository via http</h3></div></div></div><p>The git protocol gives better performance and reliability, but on a
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22734host with a web server set up, http exports may be simpler to set up.</p><p>All you need to do is place the newly created bare git repository in
735a directory that is exported by the web server, and make some
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43736adjustments to give web clients some extra information they need:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ mv proj.git /home/you/public_html/proj.git<br>
737$ cd proj.git<br>
738$ git --bare update-server-info<br>
739$ chmod a+x hooks/post-update</p></div><p>(For an explanation of the last two lines, see
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31740<a class="ulink" href="git-update-server-info.html" target="_top">git-update-server-info(1)</a> and <a class="ulink" href="githooks.html" target="_top">githooks(5)</a>.)</p><p>Advertise the URL of proj.git. Anybody else should then be able to
Junio C Hamano764a6672007-10-23 01:23:31741clone or pull from that URL, for example with a command line like:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git clone http://yourserver.com/~you/proj.git</p></div><p>(See also
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31742<a class="ulink" href="howto/setup-git-server-over-http.txt" target="_top">setup-git-server-over-http</a>
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22743for a slightly more sophisticated setup using WebDAV which also
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:33744allows pushing over http.)</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a name="pushing-changes-to-a-public-repository"></a>Pushing changes to a public repository</h3></div></div></div><p>Note that the two techniques outlined above (exporting via
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31745<a class="link" href="#exporting-via-http" title="Exporting a git repository via http">http</a> or <a class="link" href="#exporting-via-git" title="Exporting a git repository via the git protocol">git</a>) allow other
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22746maintainers to fetch your latest changes, but they do not allow write
747access, which you will need to update the public repository with the
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31748latest changes created in your private repository.</p><p>The simplest way to do this is using <a class="ulink" href="git-push.html" target="_top">git-push(1)</a> and ssh; to
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22749update the remote branch named "master" with the latest state of your
Junio C Hamanoce3650e2007-11-26 04:20:11750branch named "master", run</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git push ssh://yourserver.com/~you/proj.git master:master</p></div><p>or just</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git push ssh://yourserver.com/~you/proj.git master</p></div><p>As with git-fetch, git-push will complain if this does not result in a
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31751<a class="link" href="#fast-forwards" title="Fast-forward merges">fast forward</a>; see the following section for details on
Junio C Hamanoce3650e2007-11-26 04:20:11752handling this case.</p><p>Note that the target of a "push" is normally a
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31753<a class="link" href="#def_bare_repository">bare</a> repository. You can also push to a
Junio C Hamano2a8f6dc2007-07-09 08:48:38754repository that has a checked-out working tree, but the working tree
755will not be updated by the push. This may lead to unexpected results if
756the branch you push to is the currently checked-out branch!</p><p>As with git-fetch, you may also set up configuration options to
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43757save typing; so, for example, after</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ cat &gt;&gt;.git/config &lt;&lt;EOF<br>
758[remote "public-repo"]<br>
759        url = ssh://yourserver.com/~you/proj.git<br>
760EOF</p></div><p>you should be able to perform the above push with just</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git push public-repo master</p></div><p>See the explanations of the remote.&lt;name&gt;.url, branch.&lt;name&gt;.remote,
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31761and remote.&lt;name&gt;.push options in <a class="ulink" href="git-config.html" target="_top">git-config(1)</a> for
762details.</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a name="forcing-push"></a>What to do when a push fails</h3></div></div></div><p>If a push would not result in a <a class="link" href="#fast-forwards" title="Fast-forward merges">fast forward</a> of the
Junio C Hamanoce3650e2007-11-26 04:20:11763remote branch, then it will fail with an error like:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>error: remote 'refs/heads/master' is not an ancestor of<br>
764 local  'refs/heads/master'.<br>
765 Maybe you are not up-to-date and need to pull first?<br>
766error: failed to push to 'ssh://yourserver.com/~you/proj.git'</p></div><p>This can happen, for example, if you:</p><div class="itemizedlist"><ul type="disc"><li>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31767use <code class="literal">git-reset —hard</code> to remove already-published commits, or
Junio C Hamanoce3650e2007-11-26 04:20:11768</li><li>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31769use <code class="literal">git-commit —amend</code> to replace already-published commits
770 (as in <a class="xref" href="#fixing-a-mistake-by-rewriting-history" title="Fixing a mistake by rewriting history">the section called “Fixing a mistake by rewriting history”</a>), or
Junio C Hamanoce3650e2007-11-26 04:20:11771</li><li>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31772use <code class="literal">git-rebase</code> to rebase any already-published commits (as
773 in <a class="xref" href="#using-git-rebase" title="Keeping a patch series up to date using git-rebase">the section called “Keeping a patch series up to date using git-rebase”</a>).
Junio C Hamanoce3650e2007-11-26 04:20:11774</li></ul></div><p>You may force git-push to perform the update anyway by preceding the
775branch name with a plus sign:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git push ssh://yourserver.com/~you/proj.git +master</p></div><p>Normally whenever a branch head in a public repository is modified, it
Junio C Hamano878cc1e2007-12-14 08:35:13776is modified to point to a descendant of the commit that it pointed to
Junio C Hamanoce3650e2007-11-26 04:20:11777before. By forcing a push in this situation, you break that convention.
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31778(See <a class="xref" href="#problems-with-rewriting-history" title="Problems with rewriting history">the section called “Problems with rewriting history”</a>.)</p><p>Nevertheless, this is a common practice for people that need a simple
Junio C Hamanoce3650e2007-11-26 04:20:11779way to publish a work-in-progress patch series, and it is an acceptable
780compromise as long as you warn other developers that this is how you
781intend to manage the branch.</p><p>It's also possible for a push to fail in this way when other people have
782the right to push to the same repository. In that case, the correct
Junio C Hamanod32738e2008-07-09 19:53:42783solution is to retry the push after first updating your work: either by a
784pull, or by a fetch followed by a rebase; see the
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31785<a class="link" href="#setting-up-a-shared-repository" title="Setting up a shared repository">next section</a> and
786<a class="ulink" href="gitcvs-migration.html" target="_top">gitcvs-migration(7)</a> for more.</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a name="setting-up-a-shared-repository"></a>Setting up a shared repository</h3></div></div></div><p>Another way to collaborate is by using a model similar to that
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22787commonly used in CVS, where several developers with special rights
788all push to and pull from a single shared repository. See
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31789<a class="ulink" href="gitcvs-migration.html" target="_top">gitcvs-migration(7)</a> for instructions on how to
Junio C Hamanoed7f4f62007-05-20 09:09:09790set this up.</p><p>However, while there is nothing wrong with git's support for shared
791repositories, this mode of operation is not generally recommended,
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43792simply because the mode of collaboration that git supports—by
793exchanging patches and pulling from public repositories—has so many
Junio C Hamanoed7f4f62007-05-20 09:09:09794advantages over the central shared repository:</p><div class="itemizedlist"><ul type="disc"><li>
795Git's ability to quickly import and merge patches allows a
796 single maintainer to process incoming changes even at very
797 high rates. And when that becomes too much, git-pull provides
798 an easy way for that maintainer to delegate this job to other
799 maintainers while still allowing optional review of incoming
800 changes.
801</li><li>
802Since every developer's repository has the same complete copy
803 of the project history, no repository is special, and it is
804 trivial for another developer to take over maintenance of a
805 project, either by mutual agreement, or because a maintainer
806 becomes unresponsive or difficult to work with.
807</li><li>
808The lack of a central group of "committers" means there is
809 less need for formal decisions about who is "in" and who is
810 "out".
811</li></ul></div></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a name="setting-up-gitweb"></a>Allowing web browsing of a repository</h3></div></div></div><p>The gitweb cgi script provides users an easy way to browse your
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22812project's files and history without having to install git; see the file
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:33813gitweb/INSTALL in the git source tree for instructions on setting it up.</p></div></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="sharing-development-examples"></a>Examples</h2></div></div></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a name="maintaining-topic-branches"></a>Maintaining topic branches for a Linux subsystem maintainer</h3></div></div></div><p>This describes how Tony Luck uses git in his role as maintainer of the
814IA64 architecture for the Linux kernel.</p><p>He uses two public branches:</p><div class="itemizedlist"><ul type="disc"><li>
815A "test" tree into which patches are initially placed so that they
816 can get some exposure when integrated with other ongoing development.
817 This tree is available to Andrew for pulling into -mm whenever he
818 wants.
819</li><li>
820A "release" tree into which tested patches are moved for final sanity
821 checking, and as a vehicle to send them upstream to Linus (by sending
822 him a "please pull" request.)
823</li></ul></div><p>He also uses a set of temporary branches ("topic branches"), each
824containing a logical grouping of patches.</p><p>To set this up, first create your work tree by cloning Linus's public
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43825tree:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git work<br>
826$ cd work</p></div><p>Linus's tree will be stored in the remote branch named origin/master,
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31827and can be updated using <a class="ulink" href="git-fetch.html" target="_top">git-fetch(1)</a>; you can track other
828public trees using <a class="ulink" href="git-remote.html" target="_top">git-remote(1)</a> to set up a "remote" and
829<a class="ulink" href="git-fetch.html" target="_top">git-fetch(1)</a> to keep them up-to-date; see
830<a class="xref" href="#repositories-and-branches" title="Chapter 1. Repositories and Branches">Chapter 1, <i>Repositories and Branches</i></a>.</p><p>Now create the branches in which you are going to work; these start out
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:33831at the current tip of origin/master branch, and should be set up (using
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31832the —track option to <a class="ulink" href="git-branch.html" target="_top">git-branch(1)</a>) to merge changes in from
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43833Linus by default.</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git branch --track test origin/master<br>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31834$ git branch --track release origin/master</p></div><p>These can be easily kept up to date using <a class="ulink" href="git-pull.html" target="_top">git-pull(1)</a>.</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git checkout test &amp;&amp; git pull<br>
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43835$ git checkout release &amp;&amp; git pull</p></div><p>Important note! If you have any local changes in these branches, then
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:33836this merge will create a commit object in the history (with no local
837changes git will simply do a "Fast forward" merge). Many people dislike
838the "noise" that this creates in the Linux history, so you should avoid
839doing this capriciously in the "release" branch, as these noisy commits
840will become part of the permanent history when you ask Linus to pull
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31841from the release branch.</p><p>A few configuration variables (see <a class="ulink" href="git-config.html" target="_top">git-config(1)</a>) can
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:33842make it easy to push both branches to your public tree. (See
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31843<a class="xref" href="#setting-up-a-public-repository" title="Setting up a public repository">the section called “Setting up a public repository”</a>.)</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ cat &gt;&gt; .git/config &lt;&lt;EOF<br>
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43844[remote "mytree"]<br>
845        url =  master.kernel.org:/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/aegl/linux-2.6.git<br>
846        push = release<br>
847        push = test<br>
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:33848EOF</p></div><p>Then you can push both the test and release trees using
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31849<a class="ulink" href="git-push.html" target="_top">git-push(1)</a>:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git push mytree</p></div><p>or push just one of the test and release branches using:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git push mytree test</p></div><p>or</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git push mytree release</p></div><p>Now to apply some patches from the community. Think of a short
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:33850snappy name for a branch to hold this patch (or related group of
851patches), and create a new branch from the current tip of Linus's
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43852branch:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git checkout -b speed-up-spinlocks origin</p></div><p>Now you apply the patch(es), run some tests, and commit the change(s). If
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:33853the patch is a multi-part series, then you should apply each as a separate
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43854commit to this branch.</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ ... patch ... test  ... commit [ ... patch ... test ... commit ]*</p></div><p>When you are happy with the state of this change, you can pull it into the
855"test" branch in preparation to make it public:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git checkout test &amp;&amp; git pull . speed-up-spinlocks</p></div><p>It is unlikely that you would have any conflicts here … but you might if you
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:33856spent a while on this step and had also pulled new versions from upstream.</p><p>Some time later when enough time has passed and testing done, you can pull the
857same branch into the "release" tree ready to go upstream. This is where you
858see the value of keeping each patch (or patch series) in its own branch. It
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43859means that the patches can be moved into the "release" tree in any order.</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git checkout release &amp;&amp; git pull . speed-up-spinlocks</p></div><p>After a while, you will have a number of branches, and despite the
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:33860well chosen names you picked for each of them, you may forget what
861they are for, or what status they are in. To get a reminder of what
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:31862changes are in a specific branch, use:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git log linux..branchname | git shortlog</p></div><p>To see whether it has already been merged into the test or release branches,
Junio C Hamano764a6672007-10-23 01:23:31863use:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git log test..branchname</p></div><p>or</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git log release..branchname</p></div><p>(If this branch has not yet been merged, you will see some log entries.
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:33864If it has been merged, then there will be no output.)</p><p>Once a patch completes the great cycle (moving from test to release,
865then pulled by Linus, and finally coming back into your local
Junio C Hamano764a6672007-10-23 01:23:31866"origin/master" branch), the branch for this change is no longer needed.
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43867You detect this when the output from:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git log origin..branchname</p></div><p>is empty. At this point the branch can be deleted:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git branch -d branchname</p></div><p>Some changes are so trivial that it is not necessary to create a separate
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:33868branch and then merge into each of the test and release branches. For
869these changes, just apply directly to the "release" branch, and then
870merge that into the "test" branch.</p><p>To create diffstat and shortlog summaries of changes to include in a "please
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43871pull" request to Linus you can use:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git diff --stat origin..release</p></div><p>and</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git log -p origin..release | git shortlog</p></div><p>Here are some of the scripts that simplify all this even further.</p><div class="literallayout"><p>==== update script ====<br>
872# Update a branch in my GIT tree.  If the branch to be updated<br>
873# is origin, then pull from kernel.org.  Otherwise merge<br>
874# origin/master branch into test|release branch<br>
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:33875<br>
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43876case "$1" in<br>
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:33877test|release)<br>
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43878        git checkout $1 &amp;&amp; git pull . origin<br>
879        ;;<br>
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:33880origin)<br>
Junio C Hamano9810d632007-09-24 01:05:34881        before=$(git rev-parse refs/remotes/origin/master)<br>
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43882        git fetch origin<br>
Junio C Hamano9810d632007-09-24 01:05:34883        after=$(git rev-parse refs/remotes/origin/master)<br>
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43884        if [ $before != $after ]<br>
885        then<br>
886                git log $before..$after | git shortlog<br>
887        fi<br>
888        ;;<br>
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:33889*)<br>
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43890        echo "Usage: $0 origin|test|release" 1&gt;&amp;2<br>
891        exit 1<br>
892        ;;<br>
893esac</p></div><div class="literallayout"><p>==== merge script ====<br>
894# Merge a branch into either the test or release branch<br>
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:33895<br>
896pname=$0<br>
897<br>
898usage()<br>
899{<br>
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43900        echo "Usage: $pname branch test|release" 1&gt;&amp;2<br>
901        exit 1<br>
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:33902}<br>
903<br>
Junio C Hamano9810d632007-09-24 01:05:34904git show-ref -q --verify -- refs/heads/"$1" || {<br>
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43905        echo "Can't see branch &lt;$1&gt;" 1&gt;&amp;2<br>
906        usage<br>
Junio C Hamano9810d632007-09-24 01:05:34907}<br>
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:33908<br>
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43909case "$2" in<br>
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:33910test|release)<br>
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43911        if [ $(git log $2..$1 | wc -c) -eq 0 ]<br>
912        then<br>
913                echo $1 already merged into $2 1&gt;&amp;2<br>
914                exit 1<br>
915        fi<br>
916        git checkout $2 &amp;&amp; git pull . $1<br>
917        ;;<br>
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:33918*)<br>
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43919        usage<br>
920        ;;<br>
921esac</p></div><div class="literallayout"><p>==== status script ====<br>
922# report on status of my ia64 GIT tree<br>
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:33923<br>
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43924gb=$(tput setab 2)<br>
925rb=$(tput setab 1)<br>
926restore=$(tput setab 9)<br>
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:33927<br>
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43928if [ `git rev-list test..release | wc -c` -gt 0 ]<br>
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:33929then<br>
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43930        echo $rb Warning: commits in release that are not in test $restore<br>
931        git log test..release<br>
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:33932fi<br>
933<br>
Junio C Hamano9810d632007-09-24 01:05:34934for branch in `git show-ref --heads | sed 's|^.*/||'`<br>
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:33935do<br>
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43936        if [ $branch = test -o $branch = release ]<br>
937        then<br>
938                continue<br>
939        fi<br>
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:33940<br>
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43941        echo -n $gb ======= $branch ====== $restore " "<br>
942        status=<br>
943        for ref in test release origin/master<br>
944        do<br>
945                if [ `git rev-list $ref..$branch | wc -c` -gt 0 ]<br>
946                then<br>
947                        status=$status${ref:0:1}<br>
948                fi<br>
949        done<br>
950        case $status in<br>
951        trl)<br>
952                echo $rb Need to pull into test $restore<br>
953                ;;<br>
954        rl)<br>
955                echo "In test"<br>
956                ;;<br>
957        l)<br>
958                echo "Waiting for linus"<br>
959                ;;<br>
960        "")<br>
961                echo $rb All done $restore<br>
962                ;;<br>
963        *)<br>
964                echo $rb "&lt;$status&gt;" $restore<br>
965                ;;<br>
966        esac<br>
967        git log origin/master..$branch | git shortlog<br>
Junio C Hamanoce3650e2007-11-26 04:20:11968done</p></div></div></div></div><div class="chapter" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title"><a name="cleaning-up-history"></a>Chapter 5. Rewriting history and maintaining patch series</h2></div></div></div><div class="toc"><p><b>Table of Contents</b></p><dl><dt><span class="section"><a href="#patch-series">Creating the perfect patch series</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#using-git-rebase">Keeping a patch series up to date using git-rebase</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#rewriting-one-commit">Rewriting a single commit</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#reordering-patch-series">Reordering or selecting from a patch series</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#patch-series-tools">Other tools</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#problems-with-rewriting-history">Problems with rewriting history</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#bisect-merges">Why bisecting merge commits can be harder than bisecting linear history</a></span></dt></dl></div><p>Normally commits are only added to a project, never taken away or
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22969replaced. Git is designed with this assumption, and violating it will
970cause git's merge machinery (for example) to do the wrong thing.</p><p>However, there is a situation in which it can be useful to violate this
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:53971assumption.</p><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="patch-series"></a>Creating the perfect patch series</h2></div></div></div><p>Suppose you are a contributor to a large project, and you want to add a
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22972complicated feature, and to present it to the other developers in a way
973that makes it easy for them to read your changes, verify that they are
974correct, and understand why you made each change.</p><p>If you present all of your changes as a single patch (or commit), they
Junio C Hamanodb911ee2007-02-28 08:13:52975may find that it is too much to digest all at once.</p><p>If you present them with the entire history of your work, complete with
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22976mistakes, corrections, and dead ends, they may be overwhelmed.</p><p>So the ideal is usually to produce a series of patches such that:</p><div class="orderedlist"><ol type="1"><li>
977Each patch can be applied in order.
978</li><li>
979Each patch includes a single logical change, together with a
980 message explaining the change.
981</li><li>
982No patch introduces a regression: after applying any initial
983 part of the series, the resulting project still compiles and
984 works, and has no bugs that it didn't have before.
985</li><li>
986The complete series produces the same end result as your own
987 (probably much messier!) development process did.
988</li></ol></div><p>We will introduce some tools that can help you do this, explain how to
989use them, and then explain some of the problems that can arise because
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:53990you are rewriting history.</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="using-git-rebase"></a>Keeping a patch series up to date using git-rebase</h2></div></div></div><p>Suppose that you create a branch "mywork" on a remote-tracking branch
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:43991"origin", and create some commits on top of it:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git checkout -b mywork origin<br>
992$ vi file.txt<br>
993$ git commit<br>
994$ vi otherfile.txt<br>
995$ git commit<br>
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22996...</p></div><p>You have performed no merges into mywork, so it is just a simple linear
Junio C Hamanoc51fede2007-03-12 07:29:20997sequence of patches on top of "origin":</p><pre class="literallayout"> o--o--o &lt;-- origin
998 \
999 o--o--o &lt;-- mywork</pre><p>Some more interesting work has been done in the upstream project, and
1000"origin" has advanced:</p><pre class="literallayout"> o--o--O--o--o--o &lt;-- origin
1001 \
1002 a--b--c &lt;-- mywork</pre><p>At this point, you could use "pull" to merge your changes back in;
1003the result would create a new merge commit, like this:</p><pre class="literallayout"> o--o--O--o--o--o &lt;-- origin
1004 \ \
1005 a--b--c--m &lt;-- mywork</pre><p>However, if you prefer to keep the history in mywork a simple series of
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221006commits without any merges, you may instead choose to use
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311007<a class="ulink" href="git-rebase.html" target="_top">git-rebase(1)</a>:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git checkout mywork<br>
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:431008$ git rebase origin</p></div><p>This will remove each of your commits from mywork, temporarily saving
Junio C Hamano0868a302008-07-22 09:20:441009them as patches (in a directory named ".git/rebase-apply"), update mywork to
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221010point at the latest version of origin, then apply each of the saved
Junio C Hamanoc51fede2007-03-12 07:29:201011patches to the new mywork. The result will look like:</p><pre class="literallayout"> o--o--O--o--o--o &lt;-- origin
1012 \
1013 a'--b'--c' &lt;-- mywork</pre><p>In the process, it may discover conflicts. In that case it will stop
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311014and allow you to fix the conflicts; after fixing conflicts, use "git-add"
1015to update the index with those contents, and then, instead of
Junio C Hamano764a6672007-10-23 01:23:311016running git-commit, just run</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git rebase --continue</p></div><p>and git will continue applying the rest of the patches.</p><p>At any point you may use the <code class="literal">—abort</code> option to abort this process and
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311017return mywork to the state it had before you started the rebase:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git rebase --abort</p></div></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="rewriting-one-commit"></a>Rewriting a single commit</h2></div></div></div><p>We saw in <a class="xref" href="#fixing-a-mistake-by-rewriting-history" title="Fixing a mistake by rewriting history">the section called “Fixing a mistake by rewriting history”</a> that you can replace the
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:431018most recent commit using</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git commit --amend</p></div><p>which will replace the old commit by a new commit incorporating your
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311019changes, giving you a chance to edit the old commit message first.</p><p>You can also use a combination of this and <a class="ulink" href="git-rebase.html" target="_top">git-rebase(1)</a> to
Junio C Hamanoce3650e2007-11-26 04:20:111020replace a commit further back in your history and recreate the
1021intervening changes on top of it. First, tag the problematic commit
1022with</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git tag bad mywork~5</p></div><p>(Either gitk or git-log may be useful for finding the commit.)</p><p>Then check out that commit, edit it, and rebase the rest of the series
Junio C Hamano0e3cb532007-04-17 08:28:111023on top of it (note that we could check out the commit on a temporary
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311024branch, but instead we're using a <a class="link" href="#detached-head" title="Examining an old version without creating a new branch">detached head</a>):</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git checkout bad<br>
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:431025$ # make changes here and update the index<br>
1026$ git commit --amend<br>
1027$ git rebase --onto HEAD bad mywork</p></div><p>When you're done, you'll be left with mywork checked out, with the top
Junio C Hamano0e3cb532007-04-17 08:28:111028patches on mywork reapplied on top of your modified commit. You can
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:431029then clean up with</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git tag -d bad</p></div><p>Note that the immutable nature of git history means that you haven't really
Junio C Hamanoaa83a7d2007-03-05 02:37:291030"modified" existing commits; instead, you have replaced the old commits with
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311031new commits having new object names.</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="reordering-patch-series"></a>Reordering or selecting from a patch series</h2></div></div></div><p>Given one existing commit, the <a class="ulink" href="git-cherry-pick.html" target="_top">git-cherry-pick(1)</a> command
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221032allows you to apply the change introduced by that commit and create a
1033new commit that records it. So, for example, if "mywork" points to a
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:431034series of patches on top of "origin", you might do something like:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git checkout -b mywork-new origin<br>
Junio C Hamano764a6672007-10-23 01:23:311035$ gitk origin..mywork &amp;</p></div><p>and browse through the list of patches in the mywork branch using gitk,
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221036applying them (possibly in a different order) to mywork-new using
Junio C Hamano764a6672007-10-23 01:23:311037cherry-pick, and possibly modifying them as you go using <code class="literal">commit —amend</code>.
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311038The <a class="ulink" href="git-gui.html" target="_top">git-gui(1)</a> command may also help as it allows you to
Junio C Hamano8b8b0f22007-08-26 22:10:261039individually select diff hunks for inclusion in the index (by
1040right-clicking on the diff hunk and choosing "Stage Hunk for Commit").</p><p>Another technique is to use git-format-patch to create a series of
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:431041patches, then reset the state to before the patches:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git format-patch origin<br>
1042$ git reset --hard origin</p></div><p>Then modify, reorder, or eliminate patches as preferred before applying
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311043them again with <a class="ulink" href="git-am.html" target="_top">git-am(1)</a>.</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="patch-series-tools"></a>Other tools</h2></div></div></div><p>There are numerous other tools, such as StGIT, which exist for the
Junio C Hamanodb911ee2007-02-28 08:13:521044purpose of maintaining a patch series. These are outside of the scope of
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:531045this manual.</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="problems-with-rewriting-history"></a>Problems with rewriting history</h2></div></div></div><p>The primary problem with rewriting the history of a branch has to do
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221046with merging. Suppose somebody fetches your branch and merges it into
Junio C Hamanoc51fede2007-03-12 07:29:201047their branch, with a result something like this:</p><pre class="literallayout"> o--o--O--o--o--o &lt;-- origin
1048 \ \
1049 t--t--t--m &lt;-- their branch:</pre><p>Then suppose you modify the last three commits:</p><pre class="literallayout"> o--o--o &lt;-- new head of origin
1050 /
1051 o--o--O--o--o--o &lt;-- old head of origin</pre><p>If we examined all this history together in one repository, it will
1052look like:</p><pre class="literallayout"> o--o--o &lt;-- new head of origin
1053 /
1054 o--o--O--o--o--o &lt;-- old head of origin
1055 \ \
1056 t--t--t--m &lt;-- their branch:</pre><p>Git has no way of knowing that the new head is an updated version of
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221057the old head; it treats this situation exactly the same as it would if
1058two developers had independently done the work on the old and new heads
1059in parallel. At this point, if someone attempts to merge the new head
1060in to their branch, git will attempt to merge together the two (old and
1061new) lines of development, instead of trying to replace the old by the
1062new. The results are likely to be unexpected.</p><p>You may still choose to publish branches whose history is rewritten,
1063and it may be useful for others to be able to fetch those branches in
1064order to examine or test them, but they should not attempt to pull such
1065branches into their own work.</p><p>For true distributed development that supports proper merging,
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311066published branches should never be rewritten.</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="bisect-merges"></a>Why bisecting merge commits can be harder than bisecting linear history</h2></div></div></div><p>The <a class="ulink" href="git-bisect.html" target="_top">git-bisect(1)</a> command correctly handles history that
Junio C Hamano393e57f2007-11-20 04:53:251067includes merge commits. However, when the commit that it finds is a
1068merge commit, the user may need to work harder than usual to figure out
1069why that commit introduced a problem.</p><p>Imagine this history:</p><pre class="literallayout"> ---Z---o---X---...---o---A---C---D
1070 \ /
1071 o---o---Y---...---o---B</pre><p>Suppose that on the upper line of development, the meaning of one
1072of the functions that exists at Z is changed at commit X. The
1073commits from Z leading to A change both the function's
1074implementation and all calling sites that exist at Z, as well
1075as new calling sites they add, to be consistent. There is no
1076bug at A.</p><p>Suppose that in the meantime on the lower line of development somebody
1077adds a new calling site for that function at commit Y. The
1078commits from Z leading to B all assume the old semantics of that
1079function and the callers and the callee are consistent with each
1080other. There is no bug at B, either.</p><p>Suppose further that the two development lines merge cleanly at C,
1081so no conflict resolution is required.</p><p>Nevertheless, the code at C is broken, because the callers added
1082on the lower line of development have not been converted to the new
1083semantics introduced on the upper line of development. So if all
1084you know is that D is bad, that Z is good, and that
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311085<a class="ulink" href="git-bisect.html" target="_top">git-bisect(1)</a> identifies C as the culprit, how will you
Junio C Hamano393e57f2007-11-20 04:53:251086figure out that the problem is due to this change in semantics?</p><p>When the result of a git-bisect is a non-merge commit, you should
1087normally be able to discover the problem by examining just that commit.
1088Developers can make this easy by breaking their changes into small
1089self-contained commits. That won't help in the case above, however,
1090because the problem isn't obvious from examination of any single
1091commit; instead, a global view of the development is required. To
1092make matters worse, the change in semantics in the problematic
1093function may be just one small part of the changes in the upper
1094line of development.</p><p>On the other hand, if instead of merging at C you had rebased the
1095history between Z to B on top of A, you would have gotten this
1096linear history:</p><pre class="literallayout"> ---Z---o---X--...---o---A---o---o---Y*--...---o---B*--D*</pre><p>Bisecting between Z and D* would hit a single culprit commit Y*,
1097and understanding why Y* was broken would probably be easier.</p><p>Partly for this reason, many experienced git users, even when
1098working on an otherwise merge-heavy project, keep the history
1099linear by rebasing against the latest upstream version before
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311100publishing.</p></div></div><div class="chapter" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title"><a name="advanced-branch-management"></a>Chapter 6. Advanced branch management</h2></div></div></div><div class="toc"><p><b>Table of Contents</b></p><dl><dt><span class="section"><a href="#fetching-individual-branches">Fetching individual branches</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#fetch-fast-forwards">git fetch and fast-forwards</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#forcing-fetch">Forcing git-fetch to do non-fast-forward updates</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#remote-branch-configuration">Configuring remote branches</a></span></dt></dl></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="fetching-individual-branches"></a>Fetching individual branches</h2></div></div></div><p>Instead of using <a class="ulink" href="git-remote.html" target="_top">git-remote(1)</a>, you can also choose just
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221101to update one branch at a time, and to store it locally under an
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:431102arbitrary name:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git fetch origin todo:my-todo-work</p></div><p>The first argument, "origin", just tells git to fetch from the
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221103repository you originally cloned from. The second argument tells git
1104to fetch the branch named "todo" from the remote repository, and to
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:431105store it locally under the name refs/heads/my-todo-work.</p><p>You can also fetch branches from other repositories; so</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git fetch git://example.com/proj.git master:example-master</p></div><p>will create a new branch named "example-master" and store in it the
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221106branch named "master" from the repository at the given URL. If you
1107already have a branch named example-master, it will attempt to
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311108<a class="link" href="#fast-forwards" title="Fast-forward merges">fast-forward</a> to the commit given by example.com's
1109master branch. In more detail:</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="fetch-fast-forwards"></a>git fetch and fast-forwards</h2></div></div></div><p>In the previous example, when updating an existing branch, "git-fetch"
1110checks to make sure that the most recent commit on the remote
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221111branch is a descendant of the most recent commit on your copy of the
1112branch before updating your copy of the branch to point at the new
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311113commit. Git calls this process a <a class="link" href="#fast-forwards" title="Fast-forward merges">fast forward</a>.</p><p>A fast forward looks something like this:</p><pre class="literallayout"> o--o--o--o &lt;-- old head of the branch
Junio C Hamanoc51fede2007-03-12 07:29:201114 \
1115 o--o--o &lt;-- new head of the branch</pre><p>In some cases it is possible that the new head will <span class="strong"><strong>not</strong></span> actually be
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221116a descendant of the old head. For example, the developer may have
1117realized she made a serious mistake, and decided to backtrack,
Junio C Hamanoc51fede2007-03-12 07:29:201118resulting in a situation like:</p><pre class="literallayout"> o--o--o--o--a--b &lt;-- old head of the branch
1119 \
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311120 o--o--o &lt;-- new head of the branch</pre><p>In this case, "git-fetch" will fail, and print out a warning.</p><p>In that case, you can still force git to update to the new head, as
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221121described in the following section. However, note that in the
1122situation above this may mean losing the commits labeled "a" and "b",
1123unless you've already created a reference of your own pointing to
Junio C Hamanofce7c7e2008-07-02 03:06:381124them.</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="forcing-fetch"></a>Forcing git-fetch to do non-fast-forward updates</h2></div></div></div><p>If git fetch fails because the new head of a branch is not a
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:431125descendant of the old head, you may force the update with:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git fetch git://example.com/proj.git +master:refs/remotes/example/master</p></div><p>Note the addition of the "+" sign. Alternatively, you can use the "-f"
1126flag to force updates of all the fetched branches, as in:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git fetch -f origin</p></div><p>Be aware that commits that the old version of example/master pointed at
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:531127may be lost, as we saw in the previous section.</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="remote-branch-configuration"></a>Configuring remote branches</h2></div></div></div><p>We saw above that "origin" is just a shortcut to refer to the
Junio C Hamanodb911ee2007-02-28 08:13:521128repository that you originally cloned from. This information is
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221129stored in git configuration variables, which you can see using
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311130<a class="ulink" href="git-config.html" target="_top">git-config(1)</a>:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git config -l<br>
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221131core.repositoryformatversion=0<br>
1132core.filemode=true<br>
1133core.logallrefupdates=true<br>
1134remote.origin.url=git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/git/git.git<br>
1135remote.origin.fetch=+refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*<br>
1136branch.master.remote=origin<br>
1137branch.master.merge=refs/heads/master</p></div><p>If there are other repositories that you also use frequently, you can
1138create similar configuration options to save typing; for example,
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:431139after</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git config remote.example.url git://example.com/proj.git</p></div><p>then the following two commands will do the same thing:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git fetch git://example.com/proj.git master:refs/remotes/example/master<br>
1140$ git fetch example master:refs/remotes/example/master</p></div><p>Even better, if you add one more option:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git config remote.example.fetch master:refs/remotes/example/master</p></div><p>then the following commands will all do the same thing:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git fetch git://example.com/proj.git master:refs/remotes/example/master<br>
1141$ git fetch example master:refs/remotes/example/master<br>
Junio C Hamanofce7c7e2008-07-02 03:06:381142$ git fetch example</p></div><p>You can also add a "+" to force the update each time:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git config remote.example.fetch +master:ref/remotes/example/master</p></div><p>Don't do this unless you're sure you won't mind "git-fetch" possibly
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221143throwing away commits on mybranch.</p><p>Also note that all of the above configuration can be performed by
1144directly editing the file .git/config instead of using
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311145<a class="ulink" href="git-config.html" target="_top">git-config(1)</a>.</p><p>See <a class="ulink" href="git-config.html" target="_top">git-config(1)</a> for more details on the configuration
Junio C Hamanoce3650e2007-11-26 04:20:111146options mentioned above.</p></div></div><div class="chapter" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title"><a name="git-concepts"></a>Chapter 7. Git concepts</h2></div></div></div><div class="toc"><p><b>Table of Contents</b></p><dl><dt><span class="section"><a href="#the-object-database">The Object Database</a></span></dt><dd><dl><dt><span class="section"><a href="#commit-object">Commit Object</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#tree-object">Tree Object</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#blob-object">Blob Object</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#trust">Trust</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#tag-object">Tag Object</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#pack-files">How git stores objects efficiently: pack files</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#dangling-objects">Dangling objects</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#recovering-from-repository-corruption">Recovering from repository corruption</a></span></dt></dl></dd><dt><span class="section"><a href="#the-index">The index</a></span></dt></dl></div><p>Git is built on a small number of simple but powerful ideas. While it
Junio C Hamano597ffcf2007-09-17 17:33:151147is possible to get things done without understanding them, you will find
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311148git much more intuitive if you do.</p><p>We start with the most important, the <a class="link" href="#def_object_database">object database</a> and the <a class="link" href="#def_index">index</a>.</p><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="the-object-database"></a>The Object Database</h2></div></div></div><p>We already saw in <a class="xref" href="#understanding-commits" title="Understanding History: Commits">the section called “Understanding History: Commits”</a> that all commits are stored
Junio C Hamano597ffcf2007-09-17 17:33:151149under a 40-digit "object name". In fact, all the information needed to
1150represent the history of a project is stored in objects with such names.
1151In each case the name is calculated by taking the SHA1 hash of the
1152contents of the object. The SHA1 hash is a cryptographic hash function.
1153What that means to us is that it is impossible to find two different
1154objects with the same name. This has a number of advantages; among
1155others:</p><div class="itemizedlist"><ul type="disc"><li>
1156Git can quickly determine whether two objects are identical or not,
1157 just by comparing names.
1158</li><li>
Junio C Hamano764a6672007-10-23 01:23:311159Since object names are computed the same way in every repository, the
Junio C Hamano597ffcf2007-09-17 17:33:151160 same content stored in two repositories will always be stored under
1161 the same name.
1162</li><li>
1163Git can detect errors when it reads an object, by checking that the
1164 object's name is still the SHA1 hash of its contents.
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311165</li></ul></div><p>(See <a class="xref" href="#object-details" title="Object storage format">the section called “Object storage format”</a> for the details of the object formatting and
Junio C Hamano597ffcf2007-09-17 17:33:151166SHA1 calculation.)</p><p>There are four different types of objects: "blob", "tree", "commit", and
1167"tag".</p><div class="itemizedlist"><ul type="disc"><li>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311168A <a class="link" href="#def_blob_object">"blob" object</a> is used to store file data.
Junio C Hamano597ffcf2007-09-17 17:33:151169</li><li>
Junio C Hamanod32738e2008-07-09 19:53:421170A <a class="link" href="#def_tree_object">"tree" object</a> ties one or more
Junio C Hamano597ffcf2007-09-17 17:33:151171 "blob" objects into a directory structure. In addition, a tree object
1172 can refer to other tree objects, thus creating a directory hierarchy.
1173</li><li>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311174A <a class="link" href="#def_commit_object">"commit" object</a> ties such directory hierarchies
1175 together into a <a class="link" href="#def_DAG">directed acyclic graph</a> of revisions—each
Junio C Hamano597ffcf2007-09-17 17:33:151176 commit contains the object name of exactly one tree designating the
1177 directory hierarchy at the time of the commit. In addition, a commit
1178 refers to "parent" commit objects that describe the history of how we
1179 arrived at that directory hierarchy.
1180</li><li>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311181A <a class="link" href="#def_tag_object">"tag" object</a> symbolically identifies and can be
Junio C Hamano597ffcf2007-09-17 17:33:151182 used to sign other objects. It contains the object name and type of
1183 another object, a symbolic name (of course!) and, optionally, a
1184 signature.
1185</li></ul></div><p>The object types in some more detail:</p><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a name="commit-object"></a>Commit Object</h3></div></div></div><p>The "commit" object links a physical state of a tree with a description
1186of how we got there and why. Use the —pretty=raw option to
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311187<a class="ulink" href="git-show.html" target="_top">git-show(1)</a> or <a class="ulink" href="git-log.html" target="_top">git-log(1)</a> to examine your favorite
Junio C Hamano597ffcf2007-09-17 17:33:151188commit:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git show -s --pretty=raw 2be7fcb476<br>
1189commit 2be7fcb4764f2dbcee52635b91fedb1b3dcf7ab4<br>
1190tree fb3a8bdd0ceddd019615af4d57a53f43d8cee2bf<br>
1191parent 257a84d9d02e90447b149af58b271c19405edb6a<br>
1192author Dave Watson &lt;dwatson@mimvista.com&gt; 1187576872 -0400<br>
1193committer Junio C Hamano &lt;gitster@pobox.com&gt; 1187591163 -0700<br>
1194<br>
1195    Fix misspelling of 'suppress' in docs<br>
1196<br>
1197    Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano &lt;gitster@pobox.com&gt;</p></div><p>As you can see, a commit is defined by:</p><div class="itemizedlist"><ul type="disc"><li>
1198a tree: The SHA1 name of a tree object (as defined below), representing
1199 the contents of a directory at a certain point in time.
1200</li><li>
1201parent(s): The SHA1 name of some number of commits which represent the
Junio C Hamano878cc1e2007-12-14 08:35:131202 immediately previous step(s) in the history of the project. The
Junio C Hamano597ffcf2007-09-17 17:33:151203 example above has one parent; merge commits may have more than
1204 one. A commit with no parents is called a "root" commit, and
1205 represents the initial revision of a project. Each project must have
1206 at least one root. A project can also have multiple roots, though
1207 that isn't common (or necessarily a good idea).
1208</li><li>
1209an author: The name of the person responsible for this change, together
1210 with its date.
1211</li><li>
1212a committer: The name of the person who actually created the commit,
1213 with the date it was done. This may be different from the author, for
1214 example, if the author was someone who wrote a patch and emailed it
1215 to the person who used it to create the commit.
1216</li><li>
1217a comment describing this commit.
1218</li></ul></div><p>Note that a commit does not itself contain any information about what
1219actually changed; all changes are calculated by comparing the contents
1220of the tree referred to by this commit with the trees associated with
1221its parents. In particular, git does not attempt to record file renames
1222explicitly, though it can identify cases where the existence of the same
1223file data at changing paths suggests a rename. (See, for example, the
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311224-M option to <a class="ulink" href="git-diff.html" target="_top">git-diff(1)</a>).</p><p>A commit is usually created by <a class="ulink" href="git-commit.html" target="_top">git-commit(1)</a>, which creates a
Junio C Hamano597ffcf2007-09-17 17:33:151225commit whose parent is normally the current HEAD, and whose tree is
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311226taken from the content currently stored in the index.</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a name="tree-object"></a>Tree Object</h3></div></div></div><p>The ever-versatile <a class="ulink" href="git-show.html" target="_top">git-show(1)</a> command can also be used to
1227examine tree objects, but <a class="ulink" href="git-ls-tree.html" target="_top">git-ls-tree(1)</a> will give you more
Junio C Hamano597ffcf2007-09-17 17:33:151228details:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git ls-tree fb3a8bdd0ce<br>
1229100644 blob 63c918c667fa005ff12ad89437f2fdc80926e21c    .gitignore<br>
1230100644 blob 5529b198e8d14decbe4ad99db3f7fb632de0439d    .mailmap<br>
1231100644 blob 6ff87c4664981e4397625791c8ea3bbb5f2279a3    COPYING<br>
1232040000 tree 2fb783e477100ce076f6bf57e4a6f026013dc745    Documentation<br>
1233100755 blob 3c0032cec592a765692234f1cba47dfdcc3a9200    GIT-VERSION-GEN<br>
1234100644 blob 289b046a443c0647624607d471289b2c7dcd470b    INSTALL<br>
1235100644 blob 4eb463797adc693dc168b926b6932ff53f17d0b1    Makefile<br>
1236100644 blob 548142c327a6790ff8821d67c2ee1eff7a656b52    README<br>
1237...</p></div><p>As you can see, a tree object contains a list of entries, each with a
1238mode, object type, SHA1 name, and name, sorted by name. It represents
1239the contents of a single directory tree.</p><p>The object type may be a blob, representing the contents of a file, or
1240another tree, representing the contents of a subdirectory. Since trees
1241and blobs, like all other objects, are named by the SHA1 hash of their
1242contents, two trees have the same SHA1 name if and only if their
1243contents (including, recursively, the contents of all subdirectories)
1244are identical. This allows git to quickly determine the differences
1245between two related tree objects, since it can ignore any entries with
1246identical object names.</p><p>(Note: in the presence of submodules, trees may also have commits as
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311247entries. See <a class="xref" href="#submodules" title="Chapter 8. Submodules">Chapter 8, <i>Submodules</i></a> for documentation.)</p><p>Note that the files all have mode 644 or 755: git actually only pays
1248attention to the executable bit.</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a name="blob-object"></a>Blob Object</h3></div></div></div><p>You can use <a class="ulink" href="git-show.html" target="_top">git-show(1)</a> to examine the contents of a blob; take,
Junio C Hamano597ffcf2007-09-17 17:33:151249for example, the blob in the entry for "COPYING" from the tree above:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git show 6ff87c4664<br>
1250<br>
1251 Note that the only valid version of the GPL as far as this project<br>
1252 is concerned is _this_ particular version of the license (ie v2, not<br>
1253 v2.2 or v3.x or whatever), unless explicitly otherwise stated.<br>
1254...</p></div><p>A "blob" object is nothing but a binary blob of data. It doesn't refer
1255to anything else or have attributes of any kind.</p><p>Since the blob is entirely defined by its data, if two files in a
1256directory tree (or in multiple different versions of the repository)
1257have the same contents, they will share the same blob object. The object
1258is totally independent of its location in the directory tree, and
1259renaming a file does not change the object that file is associated with.</p><p>Note that any tree or blob object can be examined using
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311260<a class="ulink" href="git-show.html" target="_top">git-show(1)</a> with the &lt;revision&gt;:&lt;path&gt; syntax. This can
Junio C Hamano597ffcf2007-09-17 17:33:151261sometimes be useful for browsing the contents of a tree that is not
1262currently checked out.</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a name="trust"></a>Trust</h3></div></div></div><p>If you receive the SHA1 name of a blob from one source, and its contents
1263from another (possibly untrusted) source, you can still trust that those
1264contents are correct as long as the SHA1 name agrees. This is because
1265the SHA1 is designed so that it is infeasible to find different contents
1266that produce the same hash.</p><p>Similarly, you need only trust the SHA1 name of a top-level tree object
1267to trust the contents of the entire directory that it refers to, and if
1268you receive the SHA1 name of a commit from a trusted source, then you
1269can easily verify the entire history of commits reachable through
1270parents of that commit, and all of those contents of the trees referred
1271to by those commits.</p><p>So to introduce some real trust in the system, the only thing you need
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221272to do is to digitally sign just <span class="emphasis"><em>one</em></span> special note, which includes the
1273name of a top-level commit. Your digital signature shows others
1274that you trust that commit, and the immutability of the history of
1275commits tells others that they can trust the whole history.</p><p>In other words, you can easily validate a whole archive by just
1276sending out a single email that tells the people the name (SHA1 hash)
1277of the top commit, and digitally sign that email using something
Junio C Hamano597ffcf2007-09-17 17:33:151278like GPG/PGP.</p><p>To assist in this, git also provides the tag object…</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a name="tag-object"></a>Tag Object</h3></div></div></div><p>A tag object contains an object, object type, tag name, the name of the
1279person ("tagger") who created the tag, and a message, which may contain
Junio C Hamanod32738e2008-07-09 19:53:421280a signature, as can be seen using <a class="ulink" href="git-cat-file.html" target="_top">git-cat-file(1)</a>:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git cat-file tag v1.5.0<br>
Junio C Hamano597ffcf2007-09-17 17:33:151281object 437b1b20df4b356c9342dac8d38849f24ef44f27<br>
1282type commit<br>
1283tag v1.5.0<br>
1284tagger Junio C Hamano &lt;junkio@cox.net&gt; 1171411200 +0000<br>
1285<br>
1286GIT 1.5.0<br>
1287-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----<br>
1288Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux)<br>
1289<br>
1290iD8DBQBF0lGqwMbZpPMRm5oRAuRiAJ9ohBLd7s2kqjkKlq1qqC57SbnmzQCdG4ui<br>
1291nLE/L9aUXdWeTFPron96DLA=<br>
1292=2E+0<br>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311293-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----</p></div><p>See the <a class="ulink" href="git-tag.html" target="_top">git-tag(1)</a> command to learn how to create and verify tag
1294objects. (Note that <a class="ulink" href="git-tag.html" target="_top">git-tag(1)</a> can also be used to create
Junio C Hamano597ffcf2007-09-17 17:33:151295"lightweight tags", which are not tag objects at all, but just simple
Junio C Hamano9810d632007-09-24 01:05:341296references whose names begin with "refs/tags/").</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a name="pack-files"></a>How git stores objects efficiently: pack files</h3></div></div></div><p>Newly created objects are initially created in a file named after the
Junio C Hamano597ffcf2007-09-17 17:33:151297object's SHA1 hash (stored in .git/objects).</p><p>Unfortunately this system becomes inefficient once a project has a
1298lot of objects. Try this on an old project:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git count-objects<br>
12996930 objects, 47620 kilobytes</p></div><p>The first number is the number of objects which are kept in
1300individual files. The second is the amount of space taken up by
1301those "loose" objects.</p><p>You can save space and make git faster by moving these loose objects in
1302to a "pack file", which stores a group of objects in an efficient
1303compressed format; the details of how pack files are formatted can be
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311304found in <a class="ulink" href="technical/pack-format.txt" target="_top">technical/pack-format.txt</a>.</p><p>To put the loose objects into a pack, just run git repack:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git repack<br>
Junio C Hamano597ffcf2007-09-17 17:33:151305Generating pack...<br>
1306Done counting 6020 objects.<br>
1307Deltifying 6020 objects.<br>
1308 100% (6020/6020) done<br>
1309Writing 6020 objects.<br>
1310 100% (6020/6020) done<br>
1311Total 6020, written 6020 (delta 4070), reused 0 (delta 0)<br>
1312Pack pack-3e54ad29d5b2e05838c75df582c65257b8d08e1c created.</p></div><p>You can then run</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git prune</p></div><p>to remove any of the "loose" objects that are now contained in the
1313pack. This will also remove any unreferenced objects (which may be
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311314created when, for example, you use "git-reset" to remove a commit).
Junio C Hamano597ffcf2007-09-17 17:33:151315You can verify that the loose objects are gone by looking at the
1316.git/objects directory or by running</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git count-objects<br>
13170 objects, 0 kilobytes</p></div><p>Although the object files are gone, any commands that refer to those
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311318objects will work exactly as they did before.</p><p>The <a class="ulink" href="git-gc.html" target="_top">git-gc(1)</a> command performs packing, pruning, and more for
1319you, so is normally the only high-level command you need.</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a name="dangling-objects"></a>Dangling objects</h3></div></div></div><p>The <a class="ulink" href="git-fsck.html" target="_top">git-fsck(1)</a> command will sometimes complain about dangling
Junio C Hamano597ffcf2007-09-17 17:33:151320objects. They are not a problem.</p><p>The most common cause of dangling objects is that you've rebased a
1321branch, or you have pulled from somebody else who rebased a branch—see
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311322<a class="xref" href="#cleaning-up-history" title="Chapter 5. Rewriting history and maintaining patch series">Chapter 5, <i>Rewriting history and maintaining patch series</i></a>. In that case, the old head of the original
Junio C Hamano597ffcf2007-09-17 17:33:151323branch still exists, as does everything it pointed to. The branch
1324pointer itself just doesn't, since you replaced it with another one.</p><p>There are also other situations that cause dangling objects. For
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311325example, a "dangling blob" may arise because you did a "git-add" of a
Junio C Hamano597ffcf2007-09-17 17:33:151326file, but then, before you actually committed it and made it part of the
1327bigger picture, you changed something else in that file and committed
Junio C Hamano764a6672007-10-23 01:23:311328that <span class="strong"><strong>updated</strong></span> thing—the old state that you added originally ends up
Junio C Hamano597ffcf2007-09-17 17:33:151329not being pointed to by any commit or tree, so it's now a dangling blob
1330object.</p><p>Similarly, when the "recursive" merge strategy runs, and finds that
1331there are criss-cross merges and thus more than one merge base (which is
1332fairly unusual, but it does happen), it will generate one temporary
1333midway tree (or possibly even more, if you had lots of criss-crossing
1334merges and more than two merge bases) as a temporary internal merge
1335base, and again, those are real objects, but the end result will not end
1336up pointing to them, so they end up "dangling" in your repository.</p><p>Generally, dangling objects aren't anything to worry about. They can
1337even be very useful: if you screw something up, the dangling objects can
1338be how you recover your old tree (say, you did a rebase, and realized
Junio C Hamano764a6672007-10-23 01:23:311339that you really didn't want to—you can look at what dangling objects
Junio C Hamano597ffcf2007-09-17 17:33:151340you have, and decide to reset your head to some old dangling state).</p><p>For commits, you can just use:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ gitk &lt;dangling-commit-sha-goes-here&gt; --not --all</p></div><p>This asks for all the history reachable from the given commit but not
1341from any branch, tag, or other reference. If you decide it's something
1342you want, you can always create a new reference to it, e.g.,</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git branch recovered-branch &lt;dangling-commit-sha-goes-here&gt;</p></div><p>For blobs and trees, you can't do the same, but you can still examine
1343them. You can just do</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git show &lt;dangling-blob/tree-sha-goes-here&gt;</p></div><p>to show what the contents of the blob were (or, for a tree, basically
1344what the "ls" for that directory was), and that may give you some idea
1345of what the operation was that left that dangling object.</p><p>Usually, dangling blobs and trees aren't very interesting. They're
1346almost always the result of either being a half-way mergebase (the blob
1347will often even have the conflict markers from a merge in it, if you
1348have had conflicting merges that you fixed up by hand), or simply
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311349because you interrupted a "git-fetch" with ^C or something like that,
1350leaving <span class="emphasis"><em>some</em></span> of the new objects in the object database, but just
Junio C Hamano597ffcf2007-09-17 17:33:151351dangling and useless.</p><p>Anyway, once you are sure that you're not interested in any dangling
1352state, you can just prune all unreachable objects:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git prune</p></div><p>and they'll be gone. But you should only run "git prune" on a quiescent
Junio C Hamano764a6672007-10-23 01:23:311353repository—it's kind of like doing a filesystem fsck recovery: you
1354don't want to do that while the filesystem is mounted.</p><p>(The same is true of "git-fsck" itself, btw, but since
Junio C Hamano597ffcf2007-09-17 17:33:151355git-fsck never actually <span class="strong"><strong>changes</strong></span> the repository, it just reports
1356on what it found, git-fsck itself is never "dangerous" to run.
1357Running it while somebody is actually changing the repository can cause
1358confusing and scary messages, but it won't actually do anything bad. In
1359contrast, running "git prune" while somebody is actively changing the
Junio C Hamanoce3650e2007-11-26 04:20:111360repository is a <span class="strong"><strong>BAD</strong></span> idea).</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a name="recovering-from-repository-corruption"></a>Recovering from repository corruption</h3></div></div></div><p>By design, git treats data trusted to it with caution. However, even in
1361the absence of bugs in git itself, it is still possible that hardware or
1362operating system errors could corrupt data.</p><p>The first defense against such problems is backups. You can back up a
1363git directory using clone, or just using cp, tar, or any other backup
1364mechanism.</p><p>As a last resort, you can search for the corrupted objects and attempt
1365to replace them by hand. Back up your repository before attempting this
1366in case you corrupt things even more in the process.</p><p>We'll assume that the problem is a single missing or corrupted blob,
Junio C Hamano878cc1e2007-12-14 08:35:131367which is sometimes a solvable problem. (Recovering missing trees and
Junio C Hamanoce3650e2007-11-26 04:20:111368especially commits is <span class="strong"><strong>much</strong></span> harder).</p><p>Before starting, verify that there is corruption, and figure out where
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311369it is with <a class="ulink" href="git-fsck.html" target="_top">git-fsck(1)</a>; this may be time-consuming.</p><p>Assume the output looks like this:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git fsck --full<br>
Junio C Hamanoce3650e2007-11-26 04:20:111370broken link from    tree 2d9263c6d23595e7cb2a21e5ebbb53655278dff8<br>
1371              to    blob 4b9458b3786228369c63936db65827de3cc06200<br>
1372missing blob 4b9458b3786228369c63936db65827de3cc06200</p></div><p>(Typically there will be some "dangling object" messages too, but they
1373aren't interesting.)</p><p>Now you know that blob 4b9458b3 is missing, and that the tree 2d9263c6
1374points to it. If you could find just one copy of that missing blob
1375object, possibly in some other repository, you could move it into
1376.git/objects/4b/9458b3… and be done. Suppose you can't. You can
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311377still examine the tree that pointed to it with <a class="ulink" href="git-ls-tree.html" target="_top">git-ls-tree(1)</a>,
Junio C Hamanoce3650e2007-11-26 04:20:111378which might output something like:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git ls-tree 2d9263c6d23595e7cb2a21e5ebbb53655278dff8<br>
1379100644 blob 8d14531846b95bfa3564b58ccfb7913a034323b8    .gitignore<br>
1380100644 blob ebf9bf84da0aab5ed944264a5db2a65fe3a3e883    .mailmap<br>
1381100644 blob ca442d313d86dc67e0a2e5d584b465bd382cbf5c    COPYING<br>
1382...<br>
1383100644 blob 4b9458b3786228369c63936db65827de3cc06200    myfile<br>
1384...</p></div><p>So now you know that the missing blob was the data for a file named
1385"myfile". And chances are you can also identify the directory—let's
1386say it's in "somedirectory". If you're lucky the missing copy might be
1387the same as the copy you have checked out in your working tree at
1388"somedirectory/myfile"; you can test whether that's right with
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311389<a class="ulink" href="git-hash-object.html" target="_top">git-hash-object(1)</a>:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git hash-object -w somedirectory/myfile</p></div><p>which will create and store a blob object with the contents of
Junio C Hamanoce3650e2007-11-26 04:20:111390somedirectory/myfile, and output the sha1 of that object. if you're
1391extremely lucky it might be 4b9458b3786228369c63936db65827de3cc06200, in
1392which case you've guessed right, and the corruption is fixed!</p><p>Otherwise, you need more information. How do you tell which version of
1393the file has been lost?</p><p>The easiest way to do this is with:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git log --raw --all --full-history -- somedirectory/myfile</p></div><p>Because you're asking for raw output, you'll now get something like</p><div class="literallayout"><p>commit abc<br>
1394Author:<br>
1395Date:<br>
1396...<br>
1397:100644 100644 4b9458b... newsha... M somedirectory/myfile<br>
1398<br>
1399<br>
1400commit xyz<br>
1401Author:<br>
1402Date:<br>
1403<br>
1404...<br>
1405:100644 100644 oldsha... 4b9458b... M somedirectory/myfile</p></div><p>This tells you that the immediately preceding version of the file was
1406"newsha", and that the immediately following version was "oldsha".
1407You also know the commit messages that went with the change from oldsha
1408to 4b9458b and with the change from 4b9458b to newsha.</p><p>If you've been committing small enough changes, you may now have a good
1409shot at reconstructing the contents of the in-between state 4b9458b.</p><p>If you can do that, you can now recreate the missing object with</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git hash-object -w &lt;recreated-file&gt;</p></div><p>and your repository is good again!</p><p>(Btw, you could have ignored the fsck, and started with doing a</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git log --raw --all</p></div><p>and just looked for the sha of the missing object (4b9458b..) in that
1410whole thing. It's up to you - git does <span class="strong"><strong>have</strong></span> a lot of information, it is
1411just missing one particular blob version.</p></div></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="the-index"></a>The index</h2></div></div></div><p>The index is a binary file (generally kept in .git/index) containing a
Junio C Hamano597ffcf2007-09-17 17:33:151412sorted list of path names, each with permissions and the SHA1 of a blob
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311413object; <a class="ulink" href="git-ls-files.html" target="_top">git-ls-files(1)</a> can show you the contents of the index:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git ls-files --stage<br>
Junio C Hamano597ffcf2007-09-17 17:33:151414100644 63c918c667fa005ff12ad89437f2fdc80926e21c 0       .gitignore<br>
1415100644 5529b198e8d14decbe4ad99db3f7fb632de0439d 0       .mailmap<br>
1416100644 6ff87c4664981e4397625791c8ea3bbb5f2279a3 0       COPYING<br>
1417100644 a37b2152bd26be2c2289e1f57a292534a51a93c7 0       Documentation/.gitignore<br>
1418100644 fbefe9a45b00a54b58d94d06eca48b03d40a50e0 0       Documentation/Makefile<br>
1419...<br>
1420100644 2511aef8d89ab52be5ec6a5e46236b4b6bcd07ea 0       xdiff/xtypes.h<br>
1421100644 2ade97b2574a9f77e7ae4002a4e07a6a38e46d07 0       xdiff/xutils.c<br>
1422100644 d5de8292e05e7c36c4b68857c1cf9855e3d2f70a 0       xdiff/xutils.h</p></div><p>Note that in older documentation you may see the index called the
1423"current directory cache" or just the "cache". It has three important
1424properties:</p><div class="orderedlist"><ol type="1"><li><p>
1425The index contains all the information necessary to generate a single
1426(uniquely determined) tree object.
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311427</p><p>For example, running <a class="ulink" href="git-commit.html" target="_top">git-commit(1)</a> generates this tree object
Junio C Hamano597ffcf2007-09-17 17:33:151428from the index, stores it in the object database, and uses it as the
1429tree object associated with the new commit.</p></li><li><p>
1430The index enables fast comparisons between the tree object it defines
1431and the working tree.
1432</p><p>It does this by storing some additional data for each entry (such as
1433the last modified time). This data is not displayed above, and is not
1434stored in the created tree object, but it can be used to determine
1435quickly which files in the working directory differ from what was
1436stored in the index, and thus save git from having to read all of the
1437data from such files to look for changes.</p></li><li><p>
1438It can efficiently represent information about merge conflicts
1439between different tree objects, allowing each pathname to be
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221440associated with sufficient information about the trees involved that
Junio C Hamano597ffcf2007-09-17 17:33:151441you can create a three-way merge between them.
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311442</p><p>We saw in <a class="xref" href="#conflict-resolution" title="Getting conflict-resolution help during a merge">the section called “Getting conflict-resolution help during a merge”</a> that during a merge the index can
Junio C Hamano597ffcf2007-09-17 17:33:151443store multiple versions of a single file (called "stages"). The third
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311444column in the <a class="ulink" href="git-ls-files.html" target="_top">git-ls-files(1)</a> output above is the stage
Junio C Hamano597ffcf2007-09-17 17:33:151445number, and will take on values other than 0 for files with merge
1446conflicts.</p></li></ol></div><p>The index is thus a sort of temporary staging area, which is filled with
1447a tree which you are in the process of working on.</p><p>If you blow the index away entirely, you generally haven't lost any
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311448information as long as you have the name of the tree that it described.</p></div></div><div class="chapter" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title"><a name="submodules"></a>Chapter 8. Submodules</h2></div></div></div><div class="toc"><p><b>Table of Contents</b></p><dl><dt><span class="section"><a href="#_pitfalls_with_submodules">Pitfalls with submodules</a></span></dt></dl></div><p>Large projects are often composed of smaller, self-contained modules. For
Junio C Hamano4fd58d42007-09-30 00:51:141449example, an embedded Linux distribution's source tree would include every
1450piece of software in the distribution with some local modifications; a movie
1451player might need to build against a specific, known-working version of a
1452decompression library; several independent programs might all share the same
1453build scripts.</p><p>With centralized revision control systems this is often accomplished by
1454including every module in one single repository. Developers can check out
1455all modules or only the modules they need to work with. They can even modify
1456files across several modules in a single commit while moving things around
1457or updating APIs and translations.</p><p>Git does not allow partial checkouts, so duplicating this approach in Git
1458would force developers to keep a local copy of modules they are not
1459interested in touching. Commits in an enormous checkout would be slower
1460than you'd expect as Git would have to scan every directory for changes.
1461If modules have a lot of local history, clones would take forever.</p><p>On the plus side, distributed revision control systems can much better
1462integrate with external sources. In a centralized model, a single arbitrary
1463snapshot of the external project is exported from its own revision control
1464and then imported into the local revision control on a vendor branch. All
1465the history is hidden. With distributed revision control you can clone the
1466entire external history and much more easily follow development and re-merge
1467local changes.</p><p>Git's submodule support allows a repository to contain, as a subdirectory, a
1468checkout of an external project. Submodules maintain their own identity;
1469the submodule support just stores the submodule repository location and
1470commit ID, so other developers who clone the containing project
1471("superproject") can easily clone all the submodules at the same revision.
1472Partial checkouts of the superproject are possible: you can tell Git to
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311473clone none, some or all of the submodules.</p><p>The <a class="ulink" href="git-submodule.html" target="_top">git-submodule(1)</a> command is available since Git 1.5.3. Users
Junio C Hamano4fd58d42007-09-30 00:51:141474with Git 1.5.2 can look up the submodule commits in the repository and
1475manually check them out; earlier versions won't recognize the submodules at
1476all.</p><p>To see how submodule support works, create (for example) four example
Junio C Hamano9810d632007-09-24 01:05:341477repositories that can be used later as a submodule:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ mkdir ~/git<br>
1478$ cd ~/git<br>
1479$ for i in a b c d<br>
1480do<br>
1481        mkdir $i<br>
1482        cd $i<br>
1483        git init<br>
1484        echo "module $i" &gt; $i.txt<br>
1485        git add $i.txt<br>
1486        git commit -m "Initial commit, submodule $i"<br>
1487        cd ..<br>
1488done</p></div><p>Now create the superproject and add all the submodules:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ mkdir super<br>
1489$ cd super<br>
1490$ git init<br>
1491$ for i in a b c d<br>
1492do<br>
Junio C Hamano7f80ae82008-07-30 18:31:351493        git submodule add ~/git/$i $i<br>
Junio C Hamanofce7c7e2008-07-02 03:06:381494done</p></div><div class="note" style="margin-left: 0.5in; margin-right: 0.5in;"><h3 class="title">Note</h3><p>Do not use local URLs here if you plan to publish your superproject!</p></div><p>See what files <code class="literal">git-submodule</code> created:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ ls -a<br>
Junio C Hamano7f80ae82008-07-30 18:31:351495.  ..  .git  .gitmodules  a  b  c  d</p></div><p>The <code class="literal">git-submodule add &lt;repo&gt; &lt;path&gt;</code> command does a couple of things:</p><div class="itemizedlist"><ul type="disc"><li>
1496It clones the submodule from &lt;repo&gt; to the given &lt;path&gt; under the
1497 current directory and by default checks out the master branch.
Junio C Hamano9810d632007-09-24 01:05:341498</li><li>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311499It adds the submodule's clone path to the <a class="ulink" href="gitmodules.html" target="_top">gitmodules(5)</a> file and
Junio C Hamano4fd58d42007-09-30 00:51:141500 adds this file to the index, ready to be committed.
Junio C Hamano9810d632007-09-24 01:05:341501</li><li>
1502It adds the submodule's current commit ID to the index, ready to be
1503 committed.
1504</li></ul></div><p>Commit the superproject:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git commit -m "Add submodules a, b, c and d."</p></div><p>Now clone the superproject:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ cd ..<br>
1505$ git clone super cloned<br>
1506$ cd cloned</p></div><p>The submodule directories are there, but they're empty:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ ls -a a<br>
1507.  ..<br>
1508$ git submodule status<br>
1509-d266b9873ad50488163457f025db7cdd9683d88b a<br>
1510-e81d457da15309b4fef4249aba9b50187999670d b<br>
1511-c1536a972b9affea0f16e0680ba87332dc059146 c<br>
1512-d96249ff5d57de5de093e6baff9e0aafa5276a74 d</p></div><div class="note" style="margin-left: 0.5in; margin-right: 0.5in;"><h3 class="title">Note</h3><p>The commit object names shown above would be different for you, but they
1513should match the HEAD commit object names of your repositories. You can check
1514it by running <code class="literal">git ls-remote ../a</code>.</p></div><p>Pulling down the submodules is a two-step process. First run <code class="literal">git submodule
Junio C Hamanofce7c7e2008-07-02 03:06:381515init</code> to add the submodule repository URLs to <code class="literal">.git/config</code>:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git submodule init</p></div><p>Now use <code class="literal">git-submodule update</code> to clone the repositories and check out the
Junio C Hamano9810d632007-09-24 01:05:341516commits specified in the superproject:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git submodule update<br>
1517$ cd a<br>
1518$ ls -a<br>
Junio C Hamanofce7c7e2008-07-02 03:06:381519.  ..  .git  a.txt</p></div><p>One major difference between <code class="literal">git-submodule update</code> and <code class="literal">git-submodule add</code> is
1520that <code class="literal">git-submodule update</code> checks out a specific commit, rather than the tip
Junio C Hamano9810d632007-09-24 01:05:341521of a branch. It's like checking out a tag: the head is detached, so you're not
1522working on a branch.</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git branch<br>
1523* (no branch)<br>
1524  master</p></div><p>If you want to make a change within a submodule and you have a detached head,
1525then you should create or checkout a branch, make your changes, publish the
1526change within the submodule, and then update the superproject to reference the
1527new commit:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git checkout master</p></div><p>or</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git checkout -b fix-up</p></div><p>then</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ echo "adding a line again" &gt;&gt; a.txt<br>
1528$ git commit -a -m "Updated the submodule from within the superproject."<br>
1529$ git push<br>
1530$ cd ..<br>
1531$ git diff<br>
1532diff --git a/a b/a<br>
1533index d266b98..261dfac 160000<br>
1534--- a/a<br>
1535+++ b/a<br>
1536@@ -1 +1 @@<br>
1537-Subproject commit d266b9873ad50488163457f025db7cdd9683d88b<br>
1538+Subproject commit 261dfac35cb99d380eb966e102c1197139f7fa24<br>
1539$ git add a<br>
1540$ git commit -m "Updated submodule a."<br>
1541$ git push</p></div><p>You have to run <code class="literal">git submodule update</code> after <code class="literal">git pull</code> if you want to update
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311542submodules, too.</p><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="_pitfalls_with_submodules"></a>Pitfalls with submodules</h2></div></div></div><p>Always publish the submodule change before publishing the change to the
Junio C Hamano9810d632007-09-24 01:05:341543superproject that references it. If you forget to publish the submodule change,
1544others won't be able to clone the repository:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ cd ~/git/super/a<br>
1545$ echo i added another line to this file &gt;&gt; a.txt<br>
1546$ git commit -a -m "doing it wrong this time"<br>
1547$ cd ..<br>
1548$ git add a<br>
1549$ git commit -m "Updated submodule a again."<br>
1550$ git push<br>
1551$ cd ~/git/cloned<br>
1552$ git pull<br>
1553$ git submodule update<br>
1554error: pathspec '261dfac35cb99d380eb966e102c1197139f7fa24' did not match any file(s) known to git.<br>
1555Did you forget to 'git add'?<br>
1556Unable to checkout '261dfac35cb99d380eb966e102c1197139f7fa24' in submodule path 'a'</p></div><p>You also should not rewind branches in a submodule beyond commits that were
1557ever recorded in any superproject.</p><p>It's not safe to run <code class="literal">git submodule update</code> if you've made and committed
1558changes within a submodule without checking out a branch first. They will be
1559silently overwritten:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ cat a.txt<br>
1560module a<br>
1561$ echo line added from private2 &gt;&gt; a.txt<br>
1562$ git commit -a -m "line added inside private2"<br>
1563$ cd ..<br>
1564$ git submodule update<br>
1565Submodule path 'a': checked out 'd266b9873ad50488163457f025db7cdd9683d88b'<br>
1566$ cd a<br>
1567$ cat a.txt<br>
1568module a</p></div><div class="note" style="margin-left: 0.5in; margin-right: 0.5in;"><h3 class="title">Note</h3><p>The changes are still visible in the submodule's reflog.</p></div><p>This is not the case if you did not commit your changes.</p></div></div><div class="chapter" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title"><a name="low-level-operations"></a>Chapter 9. Low-level git operations</h2></div></div></div><div class="toc"><p><b>Table of Contents</b></p><dl><dt><span class="section"><a href="#object-manipulation">Object access and manipulation</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#the-workflow">The Workflow</a></span></dt><dd><dl><dt><span class="section"><a href="#working-directory-to-index">working directory -&gt; index</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#index-to-object-database">index -&gt; object database</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#object-database-to-index">object database -&gt; index</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#index-to-working-directory">index -&gt; working directory</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#tying-it-all-together">Tying it all together</a></span></dt></dl></dd><dt><span class="section"><a href="#examining-the-data">Examining the data</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#merging-multiple-trees">Merging multiple trees</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#merging-multiple-trees-2">Merging multiple trees, continued</a></span></dt></dl></div><p>Many of the higher-level commands were originally implemented as shell
Junio C Hamano597ffcf2007-09-17 17:33:151569scripts using a smaller core of low-level git commands. These can still
1570be useful when doing unusual things with git, or just as a way to
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311571understand its inner workings.</p><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="object-manipulation"></a>Object access and manipulation</h2></div></div></div><p>The <a class="ulink" href="git-cat-file.html" target="_top">git-cat-file(1)</a> command can show the contents of any object,
1572though the higher-level <a class="ulink" href="git-show.html" target="_top">git-show(1)</a> is usually more useful.</p><p>The <a class="ulink" href="git-commit-tree.html" target="_top">git-commit-tree(1)</a> command allows constructing commits with
1573arbitrary parents and trees.</p><p>A tree can be created with <a class="ulink" href="git-write-tree.html" target="_top">git-write-tree(1)</a> and its data can be
1574accessed by <a class="ulink" href="git-ls-tree.html" target="_top">git-ls-tree(1)</a>. Two trees can be compared with
1575<a class="ulink" href="git-diff-tree.html" target="_top">git-diff-tree(1)</a>.</p><p>A tag is created with <a class="ulink" href="git-mktag.html" target="_top">git-mktag(1)</a>, and the signature can be
1576verified by <a class="ulink" href="git-verify-tag.html" target="_top">git-verify-tag(1)</a>, though it is normally simpler to
1577use <a class="ulink" href="git-tag.html" target="_top">git-tag(1)</a> for both.</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="the-workflow"></a>The Workflow</h2></div></div></div><p>High-level operations such as <a class="ulink" href="git-commit.html" target="_top">git-commit(1)</a>,
1578<a class="ulink" href="git-checkout.html" target="_top">git-checkout(1)</a> and <a class="ulink" href="git-reset.html" target="_top">git-reset(1)</a> work by moving data
Junio C Hamano764a6672007-10-23 01:23:311579between the working tree, the index, and the object database. Git
1580provides low-level operations which perform each of these steps
1581individually.</p><p>Generally, all "git" operations work on the index file. Some operations
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221582work <span class="strong"><strong>purely</strong></span> on the index file (showing the current state of the
Junio C Hamano597ffcf2007-09-17 17:33:151583index), but most operations move data between the index file and either
1584the database or the working directory. Thus there are four main
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311585combinations:</p><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a name="working-directory-to-index"></a>working directory -&gt; index</h3></div></div></div><p>The <a class="ulink" href="git-update-index.html" target="_top">git-update-index(1)</a> command updates the index with
Junio C Hamano597ffcf2007-09-17 17:33:151586information from the working directory. You generally update the
1587index information by just specifying the filename you want to update,
1588like so:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git update-index filename</p></div><p>but to avoid common mistakes with filename globbing etc, the command
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221589will not normally add totally new entries or remove old entries,
1590i.e. it will normally just update existing cache entries.</p><p>To tell git that yes, you really do realize that certain files no
1591longer exist, or that new files should be added, you
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:431592should use the <code class="literal">—remove</code> and <code class="literal">—add</code> flags respectively.</p><p>NOTE! A <code class="literal">—remove</code> flag does <span class="emphasis"><em>not</em></span> mean that subsequent filenames will
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221593necessarily be removed: if the files still exist in your directory
1594structure, the index will be updated with their new status, not
Junio C Hamano774239c2007-12-01 01:57:431595removed. The only thing <code class="literal">—remove</code> means is that update-index will be
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221596considering a removed file to be a valid thing, and if the file really
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311597does not exist any more, it will update the index accordingly.</p><p>As a special case, you can also do <code class="literal">git update-index —refresh</code>, which
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221598will refresh the "stat" information of each index to match the current
1599stat information. It will <span class="emphasis"><em>not</em></span> update the object status itself, and
1600it will only update the fields that are used to quickly test whether
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311601an object still matches its old backing store object.</p><p>The previously introduced <a class="ulink" href="git-add.html" target="_top">git-add(1)</a> is just a wrapper for
1602<a class="ulink" href="git-update-index.html" target="_top">git-update-index(1)</a>.</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a name="index-to-object-database"></a>index -&gt; object database</h3></div></div></div><p>You write your current index file to a "tree" object with the program</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git write-tree</p></div><p>that doesn't come with any options—it will just write out the
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221603current index into the set of tree objects that describe that state,
1604and it will return the name of the resulting top-level tree. You can
1605use that tree to re-generate the index at any time by going in the
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:531606other direction:</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a name="object-database-to-index"></a>object database -&gt; index</h3></div></div></div><p>You read a "tree" file from the object database, and use that to
Junio C Hamano764a6672007-10-23 01:23:311607populate (and overwrite—don't do this if your index contains any
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221608unsaved state that you might want to restore later!) your current
Junio C Hamanofce7c7e2008-07-02 03:06:381609index. Normal operation is just</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git read-tree &lt;sha1 of tree&gt;</p></div><p>and your index file will now be equivalent to the tree that you saved
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221610earlier. However, that is only your <span class="emphasis"><em>index</em></span> file: your working
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:531611directory contents have not been modified.</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a name="index-to-working-directory"></a>index -&gt; working directory</h3></div></div></div><p>You update your working directory from the index by "checking out"
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221612files. This is not a very common operation, since normally you'd just
1613keep your files updated, and rather than write to your working
1614directory, you'd tell the index files about the changes in your
1615working directory (i.e. <code class="literal">git-update-index</code>).</p><p>However, if you decide to jump to a new version, or check out somebody
1616else's version, or just restore a previous tree, you'd populate your
1617index file with read-tree, and then you need to check out the result
Junio C Hamanofce7c7e2008-07-02 03:06:381618with</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git checkout-index filename</p></div><p>or, if you want to check out all of the index, use <code class="literal">-a</code>.</p><p>NOTE! git-checkout-index normally refuses to overwrite old files, so
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221619if you have an old version of the tree already checked out, you will
1620need to use the "-f" flag (<span class="emphasis"><em>before</em></span> the "-a" flag or the filename) to
1621<span class="emphasis"><em>force</em></span> the checkout.</p><p>Finally, there are a few odds and ends which are not purely moving
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311622from one representation to the other:</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a name="tying-it-all-together"></a>Tying it all together</h3></div></div></div><p>To commit a tree you have instantiated with "git write-tree", you'd
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221623create a "commit" object that refers to that tree and the history
Junio C Hamano764a6672007-10-23 01:23:311624behind it—most notably the "parent" commits that preceded it in
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221625history.</p><p>Normally a "commit" has one parent: the previous state of the tree
1626before a certain change was made. However, sometimes it can have two
1627or more parent commits, in which case we call it a "merge", due to the
1628fact that such a commit brings together ("merges") two or more
1629previous states represented by other commits.</p><p>In other words, while a "tree" represents a particular directory state
1630of a working directory, a "commit" represents that state in "time",
1631and explains how we got there.</p><p>You create a commit object by giving it the tree that describes the
Junio C Hamanofce7c7e2008-07-02 03:06:381632state at the time of the commit, and a list of parents:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git commit-tree &lt;tree&gt; -p &lt;parent&gt; [-p &lt;parent2&gt; ..]</p></div><p>and then giving the reason for the commit on stdin (either through
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221633redirection from a pipe or file, or by just typing it at the tty).</p><p>git-commit-tree will return the name of the object that represents
1634that commit, and you should save it away for later use. Normally,
1635you'd commit a new <code class="literal">HEAD</code> state, and while git doesn't care where you
1636save the note about that state, in practice we tend to just write the
1637result to the file pointed at by <code class="literal">.git/HEAD</code>, so that we can always see
1638what the last committed state was.</p><p>Here is an ASCII art by Jon Loeliger that illustrates how
1639various pieces fit together.</p><div class="literallayout"><p><br>
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:431640                     commit-tree<br>
1641                      commit obj<br>
1642                       +----+<br>
1643                       |    |<br>
1644                       |    |<br>
1645                       V    V<br>
1646                    +-----------+<br>
1647                    | Object DB |<br>
1648                    |  Backing  |<br>
1649                    |   Store   |<br>
1650                    +-----------+<br>
1651                       ^<br>
1652           write-tree  |     |<br>
1653             tree obj  |     |<br>
1654                       |     |  read-tree<br>
1655                       |     |  tree obj<br>
1656                             V<br>
1657                    +-----------+<br>
1658                    |   Index   |<br>
1659                    |  "cache"  |<br>
1660                    +-----------+<br>
1661         update-index  ^<br>
1662             blob obj  |     |<br>
1663                       |     |<br>
1664    checkout-index -u  |     |  checkout-index<br>
1665             stat      |     |  blob obj<br>
1666                             V<br>
1667                    +-----------+<br>
1668                    |  Working  |<br>
1669                    | Directory |<br>
1670                    +-----------+<br>
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:531671</p></div></div></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="examining-the-data"></a>Examining the data</h2></div></div></div><p>You can examine the data represented in the object database and the
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221672index with various helper tools. For every object, you can use
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311673<a class="ulink" href="git-cat-file.html" target="_top">git-cat-file(1)</a> to examine details about the
Junio C Hamanofce7c7e2008-07-02 03:06:381674object:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git cat-file -t &lt;objectname&gt;</p></div><p>shows the type of the object, and once you have the type (which is
1675usually implicit in where you find the object), you can use</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git cat-file blob|tree|commit|tag &lt;objectname&gt;</p></div><p>to show its contents. NOTE! Trees have binary content, and as a result
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221676there is a special helper for showing that content, called
1677<code class="literal">git-ls-tree</code>, which turns the binary content into a more easily
1678readable form.</p><p>It's especially instructive to look at "commit" objects, since those
1679tend to be small and fairly self-explanatory. In particular, if you
1680follow the convention of having the top commit name in <code class="literal">.git/HEAD</code>,
Junio C Hamanofce7c7e2008-07-02 03:06:381681you can do</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git cat-file commit HEAD</p></div><p>to see what the top commit was.</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="merging-multiple-trees"></a>Merging multiple trees</h2></div></div></div><p>Git helps you do a three-way merge, which you can expand to n-way by
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221682repeating the merge procedure arbitrary times until you finally
1683"commit" the state. The normal situation is that you'd only do one
1684three-way merge (two parents), and commit it, but if you like to, you
1685can do multiple parents in one go.</p><p>To do a three-way merge, you need the two sets of "commit" objects
1686that you want to merge, use those to find the closest common parent (a
1687third "commit" object), and then use those commit objects to find the
1688state of the directory ("tree" object) at these points.</p><p>To get the "base" for the merge, you first look up the common parent
Junio C Hamanofce7c7e2008-07-02 03:06:381689of two commits with</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git merge-base &lt;commit1&gt; &lt;commit2&gt;</p></div><p>which will return you the commit they are both based on. You should
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221690now look up the "tree" objects of those commits, which you can easily
Junio C Hamanofce7c7e2008-07-02 03:06:381691do with (for example)</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git cat-file commit &lt;commitname&gt; | head -1</p></div><p>since the tree object information is always the first line in a commit
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221692object.</p><p>Once you know the three trees you are going to merge (the one "original"
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:531693tree, aka the common tree, and the two "result" trees, aka the branches
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221694you want to merge), you do a "merge" read into the index. This will
1695complain if it has to throw away your old index contents, so you should
Junio C Hamano764a6672007-10-23 01:23:311696make sure that you've committed those—in fact you would normally
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221697always do a merge against your last commit (which should thus match what
Junio C Hamanofce7c7e2008-07-02 03:06:381698you have in your current index anyway).</p><p>To do the merge, do</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git read-tree -m -u &lt;origtree&gt; &lt;yourtree&gt; &lt;targettree&gt;</p></div><p>which will do all trivial merge operations for you directly in the
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221699index file, and you can just write the result out with
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311700<code class="literal">git write-tree</code>.</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="merging-multiple-trees-2"></a>Merging multiple trees, continued</h2></div></div></div><p>Sadly, many merges aren't trivial. If there are files that have
Junio C Hamano764a6672007-10-23 01:23:311701been added, moved or removed, or if both branches have modified the
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221702same file, you will be left with an index tree that contains "merge
1703entries" in it. Such an index tree can <span class="emphasis"><em>NOT</em></span> be written out to a tree
1704object, and you will have to resolve any such merge clashes using
Junio C Hamanofce7c7e2008-07-02 03:06:381705other tools before you can write out the result.</p><p>You can examine such index state with <code class="literal">git ls-files —unmerged</code>
1706command. An example:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git read-tree -m $orig HEAD $target<br>
1707$ git ls-files --unmerged<br>
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:431708100644 263414f423d0e4d70dae8fe53fa34614ff3e2860 1       hello.c<br>
1709100644 06fa6a24256dc7e560efa5687fa84b51f0263c3a 2       hello.c<br>
Junio C Hamanofce7c7e2008-07-02 03:06:381710100644 cc44c73eb783565da5831b4d820c962954019b69 3       hello.c</p></div><p>Each line of the <code class="literal">git ls-files —unmerged</code> output begins with
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221711the blob mode bits, blob SHA1, <span class="emphasis"><em>stage number</em></span>, and the
1712filename. The <span class="emphasis"><em>stage number</em></span> is git's way to say which tree it
1713came from: stage 1 corresponds to <code class="literal">$orig</code> tree, stage 2 <code class="literal">HEAD</code>
1714tree, and stage3 <code class="literal">$target</code> tree.</p><p>Earlier we said that trivial merges are done inside
1715<code class="literal">git-read-tree -m</code>. For example, if the file did not change
1716from <code class="literal">$orig</code> to <code class="literal">HEAD</code> nor <code class="literal">$target</code>, or if the file changed
1717from <code class="literal">$orig</code> to <code class="literal">HEAD</code> and <code class="literal">$orig</code> to <code class="literal">$target</code> the same way,
1718obviously the final outcome is what is in <code class="literal">HEAD</code>. What the
1719above example shows is that file <code class="literal">hello.c</code> was changed from
1720<code class="literal">$orig</code> to <code class="literal">HEAD</code> and <code class="literal">$orig</code> to <code class="literal">$target</code> in a different way.
1721You could resolve this by running your favorite 3-way merge
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:531722program, e.g. <code class="literal">diff3</code>, <code class="literal">merge</code>, or git's own merge-file, on
Junio C Hamanofce7c7e2008-07-02 03:06:381723the blob objects from these three stages yourself, like this:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git cat-file blob 263414f... &gt;hello.c~1<br>
1724$ git cat-file blob 06fa6a2... &gt;hello.c~2<br>
1725$ git cat-file blob cc44c73... &gt;hello.c~3<br>
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:431726$ git merge-file hello.c~2 hello.c~1 hello.c~3</p></div><p>This would leave the merge result in <code class="literal">hello.c~2</code> file, along
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221727with conflict markers if there are conflicts. After verifying
1728the merge result makes sense, you can tell git what the final
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:431729merge result for this file is by:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ mv -f hello.c~2 hello.c<br>
Junio C Hamanod32738e2008-07-09 19:53:421730$ git update-index hello.c</p></div><p>When a path is in the "unmerged" state, running <code class="literal">git-update-index</code> for
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221731that path tells git to mark the path resolved.</p><p>The above is the description of a git merge at the lowest level,
1732to help you understand what conceptually happens under the hood.
Junio C Hamanod32738e2008-07-09 19:53:421733In practice, nobody, not even git itself, runs <code class="literal">git-cat-file</code> three times
1734for this. There is a <code class="literal">git-merge-index</code> program that extracts the
Junio C Hamanofce7c7e2008-07-02 03:06:381735stages to temporary files and calls a "merge" script on it:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git merge-index git-merge-one-file hello.c</p></div><p>and that is what higher level <code class="literal">git-merge -s resolve</code> is implemented with.</p></div></div><div class="chapter" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title"><a name="hacking-git"></a>Chapter 10. Hacking git</h2></div></div></div><div class="toc"><p><b>Table of Contents</b></p><dl><dt><span class="section"><a href="#object-details">Object storage format</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#birdview-on-the-source-code">A birds-eye view of Git's source code</a></span></dt></dl></div><p>This chapter covers internal details of the git implementation which
Junio C Hamano597ffcf2007-09-17 17:33:151736probably only git developers need to understand.</p><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="object-details"></a>Object storage format</h2></div></div></div><p>All objects have a statically determined "type" which identifies the
1737format of the object (i.e. how it is used, and how it can refer to other
1738objects). There are currently four different object types: "blob",
1739"tree", "commit", and "tag".</p><p>Regardless of object type, all objects share the following
1740characteristics: they are all deflated with zlib, and have a header
1741that not only specifies their type, but also provides size information
1742about the data in the object. It's worth noting that the SHA1 hash
1743that is used to name the object is the hash of the original data
1744plus this header, so <code class="literal">sha1sum</code> <span class="emphasis"><em>file</em></span> does not match the object name
1745for <span class="emphasis"><em>file</em></span>.
1746(Historical note: in the dawn of the age of git the hash
1747was the sha1 of the <span class="emphasis"><em>compressed</em></span> object.)</p><p>As a result, the general consistency of an object can always be tested
1748independently of the contents or the type of the object: all objects can
1749be validated by verifying that (a) their hashes match the content of the
1750file and (b) the object successfully inflates to a stream of bytes that
1751forms a sequence of &lt;ascii type without space&gt; + &lt;space&gt; + &lt;ascii decimal
1752size&gt; + &lt;byte\0&gt; + &lt;binary object data&gt;.</p><p>The structured objects can further have their structure and
1753connectivity to other objects verified. This is generally done with
1754the <code class="literal">git-fsck</code> program, which generates a full dependency graph
1755of all objects, and verifies their internal consistency (in addition
1756to just verifying their superficial consistency through the hash).</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="birdview-on-the-source-code"></a>A birds-eye view of Git's source code</h2></div></div></div><p>It is not always easy for new developers to find their way through Git's
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331757source code. This section gives you a little guidance to show where to
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:431758start.</p><p>A good place to start is with the contents of the initial commit, with:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git checkout e83c5163</p></div><p>The initial revision lays the foundation for almost everything git has
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331759today, but is small enough to read in one sitting.</p><p>Note that terminology has changed since that revision. For example, the
1760README in that revision uses the word "changeset" to describe what we
Junio C Hamanod32738e2008-07-09 19:53:421761now call a <a class="link" href="#def_commit_object">commit</a>.</p><p>Also, we do not call it "cache" any more, but rather "index"; however, the
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331762file is still called <code class="literal">cache.h</code>. Remark: Not much reason to change it now,
1763especially since there is no good single name for it anyway, because it is
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311764basically <span class="emphasis"><em>the</em></span> header file which is included by <span class="emphasis"><em>all</em></span> of Git's C sources.</p><p>If you grasp the ideas in that initial commit, you should check out a
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331765more recent version and skim <code class="literal">cache.h</code>, <code class="literal">object.h</code> and <code class="literal">commit.h</code>.</p><p>In the early days, Git (in the tradition of UNIX) was a bunch of programs
1766which were extremely simple, and which you used in scripts, piping the
1767output of one into another. This turned out to be good for initial
1768development, since it was easier to test new things. However, recently
1769many of these parts have become builtins, and some of the core has been
1770"libified", i.e. put into libgit.a for performance, portability reasons,
1771and to avoid code duplication.</p><p>By now, you know what the index is (and find the corresponding data
1772structures in <code class="literal">cache.h</code>), and that there are just a couple of object types
1773(blobs, trees, commits and tags) which inherit their common structure from
1774<code class="literal">struct object</code>, which is their first member (and thus, you can cast e.g.
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311775<code class="literal">(struct object *)commit</code> to achieve the <span class="emphasis"><em>same</em></span> as <code class="literal">&amp;commit-&gt;object</code>, i.e.
1776get at the object name and flags).</p><p>Now is a good point to take a break to let this information sink in.</p><p>Next step: get familiar with the object naming. Read <a class="xref" href="#naming-commits" title="Naming commits">the section called “Naming commits”</a>.
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331777There are quite a few ways to name an object (and not only revisions!).
1778All of these are handled in <code class="literal">sha1_name.c</code>. Just have a quick look at
1779the function <code class="literal">get_sha1()</code>. A lot of the special handling is done by
1780functions like <code class="literal">get_sha1_basic()</code> or the likes.</p><p>This is just to get you into the groove for the most libified part of Git:
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311781the revision walker.</p><p>Basically, the initial version of <code class="literal">git-log</code> was a shell script:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git-rev-list --pretty $(git-rev-parse --default HEAD "$@") | \<br>
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:431782        LESS=-S ${PAGER:-less}</p></div><p>What does this mean?</p><p><code class="literal">git-rev-list</code> is the original version of the revision walker, which
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311783<span class="emphasis"><em>always</em></span> printed a list of revisions to stdout. It is still functional,
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331784and needs to, since most new Git programs start out as scripts using
1785<code class="literal">git-rev-list</code>.</p><p><code class="literal">git-rev-parse</code> is not as important any more; it was only used to filter out
1786options that were relevant for the different plumbing commands that were
1787called by the script.</p><p>Most of what <code class="literal">git-rev-list</code> did is contained in <code class="literal">revision.c</code> and
1788<code class="literal">revision.h</code>. It wraps the options in a struct named <code class="literal">rev_info</code>, which
1789controls how and what revisions are walked, and more.</p><p>The original job of <code class="literal">git-rev-parse</code> is now taken by the function
1790<code class="literal">setup_revisions()</code>, which parses the revisions and the common command line
1791options for the revision walker. This information is stored in the struct
1792<code class="literal">rev_info</code> for later consumption. You can do your own command line option
1793parsing after calling <code class="literal">setup_revisions()</code>. After that, you have to call
1794<code class="literal">prepare_revision_walk()</code> for initialization, and then you can get the
1795commits one by one with the function <code class="literal">get_revision()</code>.</p><p>If you are interested in more details of the revision walking process,
1796just have a look at the first implementation of <code class="literal">cmd_log()</code>; call
Junio C Hamanofce7c7e2008-07-02 03:06:381797<code class="literal">git show v1.3.0~155^2~4</code> and scroll down to that function (note that you
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311798no longer need to call <code class="literal">setup_pager()</code> directly).</p><p>Nowadays, <code class="literal">git-log</code> is a builtin, which means that it is <span class="emphasis"><em>contained</em></span> in the
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331799command <code class="literal">git</code>. The source side of a builtin is</p><div class="itemizedlist"><ul type="disc"><li>
1800a function called <code class="literal">cmd_&lt;bla&gt;</code>, typically defined in <code class="literal">builtin-&lt;bla&gt;.c</code>,
1801 and declared in <code class="literal">builtin.h</code>,
1802</li><li>
1803an entry in the <code class="literal">commands[]</code> array in <code class="literal">git.c</code>, and
1804</li><li>
1805an entry in <code class="literal">BUILTIN_OBJECTS</code> in the <code class="literal">Makefile</code>.
1806</li></ul></div><p>Sometimes, more than one builtin is contained in one source file. For
1807example, <code class="literal">cmd_whatchanged()</code> and <code class="literal">cmd_log()</code> both reside in <code class="literal">builtin-log.c</code>,
1808since they share quite a bit of code. In that case, the commands which are
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311809<span class="emphasis"><em>not</em></span> named like the <code class="literal">.c</code> file in which they live have to be listed in
1810<code class="literal">BUILT_INS</code> in the <code class="literal">Makefile</code>.</p><p><code class="literal">git-log</code> looks more complicated in C than it does in the original script,
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331811but that allows for a much greater flexibility and performance.</p><p>Here again it is a good point to take a pause.</p><p>Lesson three is: study the code. Really, it is the best way to learn about
1812the organization of Git (after you know the basic concepts).</p><p>So, think about something which you are interested in, say, "how can I
1813access a blob just knowing the object name of it?". The first step is to
1814find a Git command with which you can do it. In this example, it is either
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311815<code class="literal">git-show</code> or <code class="literal">git-cat-file</code>.</p><p>For the sake of clarity, let's stay with <code class="literal">git-cat-file</code>, because it</p><div class="itemizedlist"><ul type="disc"><li>
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331816is plumbing, and
1817</li><li>
1818was around even in the initial commit (it literally went only through
1819 some 20 revisions as <code class="literal">cat-file.c</code>, was renamed to <code class="literal">builtin-cat-file.c</code>
1820 when made a builtin, and then saw less than 10 versions).
1821</li></ul></div><p>So, look into <code class="literal">builtin-cat-file.c</code>, search for <code class="literal">cmd_cat_file()</code> and look what
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:431822it does.</p><div class="literallayout"><p>        git_config(git_default_config);<br>
1823        if (argc != 3)<br>
1824                usage("git-cat-file [-t|-s|-e|-p|&lt;type&gt;] &lt;sha1&gt;");<br>
1825        if (get_sha1(argv[2], sha1))<br>
1826                die("Not a valid object name %s", argv[2]);</p></div><p>Let's skip over the obvious details; the only really interesting part
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331827here is the call to <code class="literal">get_sha1()</code>. It tries to interpret <code class="literal">argv[2]</code> as an
1828object name, and if it refers to an object which is present in the current
1829repository, it writes the resulting SHA-1 into the variable <code class="literal">sha1</code>.</p><p>Two things are interesting here:</p><div class="itemizedlist"><ul type="disc"><li>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311830<code class="literal">get_sha1()</code> returns 0 on <span class="emphasis"><em>success</em></span>. This might surprise some new
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331831 Git hackers, but there is a long tradition in UNIX to return different
Junio C Hamano764a6672007-10-23 01:23:311832 negative numbers in case of different errors—and 0 on success.
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331833</li><li>
1834the variable <code class="literal">sha1</code> in the function signature of <code class="literal">get_sha1()</code> is <code class="literal">unsigned
1835 char *</code>, but is actually expected to be a pointer to <code class="literal">unsigned
1836 char[20]</code>. This variable will contain the 160-bit SHA-1 of the given
1837 commit. Note that whenever a SHA-1 is passed as <code class="literal">unsigned char *</code>, it
1838 is the binary representation, as opposed to the ASCII representation in
1839 hex characters, which is passed as <code class="literal">char *</code>.
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:431840</li></ul></div><p>You will see both of these things throughout the code.</p><p>Now, for the meat:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>        case 0:<br>
1841                buf = read_object_with_reference(sha1, argv[1], &amp;size, NULL);</p></div><p>This is how you read a blob (actually, not only a blob, but any type of
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331842object). To know how the function <code class="literal">read_object_with_reference()</code> actually
1843works, find the source code for it (something like <code class="literal">git grep
1844read_object_with | grep ":[a-z]"</code> in the git repository), and read
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:431845the source.</p><p>To find out how the result can be used, just read on in <code class="literal">cmd_cat_file()</code>:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>        write_or_die(1, buf, size);</p></div><p>Sometimes, you do not know where to look for a feature. In many such cases,
Junio C Hamanofce7c7e2008-07-02 03:06:381846it helps to search through the output of <code class="literal">git log</code>, and then <code class="literal">git-show</code> the
1847corresponding commit.</p><p>Example: If you know that there was some test case for <code class="literal">git-bundle</code>, but
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311848do not remember where it was (yes, you <span class="emphasis"><em>could</em></span> <code class="literal">git grep bundle t/</code>, but that
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:431849does not illustrate the point!):</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git log --no-merges t/</p></div><p>In the pager (<code class="literal">less</code>), just search for "bundle", go a few lines back,
1850and see that it is in commit 18449ab0… Now just copy this object name,
1851and paste it into the command line</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git show 18449ab0</p></div><p>Voila.</p><p>Another example: Find out what to do in order to make some script a
1852builtin:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git log --no-merges --diff-filter=A builtin-*.c</p></div><p>You see, Git is actually the best tool to find out about the source of Git
Junio C Hamano9810d632007-09-24 01:05:341853itself!</p></div></div><div class="chapter" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title"><a name="glossary"></a>Chapter 11. GIT Glossary</h2></div></div></div><div class="variablelist"><dl><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411854<a name="def_alternate_object_database"></a>alternate object database
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221855</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311856 Via the alternates mechanism, a <a class="link" href="#def_repository">repository</a>
1857 can inherit part of its <a class="link" href="#def_object_database">object database</a>
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331858 from another object database, which is called "alternate".
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221859</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411860<a name="def_bare_repository"></a>bare repository
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221861</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331862 A bare repository is normally an appropriately
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311863 named <a class="link" href="#def_directory">directory</a> with a <code class="literal">.git</code> suffix that does not
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411864 have a locally checked-out copy of any of the files under
Junio C Hamano36460982007-05-27 04:29:121865 revision control. That is, all of the <code class="literal">git</code>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411866 administrative and control files that would normally be present in the
1867 hidden <code class="literal">.git</code> sub-directory are directly present in the
1868 <code class="literal">repository.git</code> directory instead,
1869 and no other files are present and checked out. Usually publishers of
1870 public repositories make bare repositories available.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221871</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411872<a name="def_blob_object"></a>blob object
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221873</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311874 Untyped <a class="link" href="#def_object">object</a>, e.g. the contents of a file.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221875</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411876<a name="def_branch"></a>branch
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221877</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331878 A "branch" is an active line of development. The most recent
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311879 <a class="link" href="#def_commit">commit</a> on a branch is referred to as the tip of
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331880 that branch. The tip of the branch is referenced by a branch
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311881 <a class="link" href="#def_head">head</a>, which moves forward as additional development
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331882 is done on the branch. A single git
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311883 <a class="link" href="#def_repository">repository</a> can track an arbitrary number of
1884 branches, but your <a class="link" href="#def_working_tree">working tree</a> is
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331885 associated with just one of them (the "current" or "checked out"
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311886 branch), and <a class="link" href="#def_HEAD">HEAD</a> points to that branch.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221887</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411888<a name="def_cache"></a>cache
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221889</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311890 Obsolete for: <a class="link" href="#def_index">index</a>.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221891</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411892<a name="def_chain"></a>chain
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221893</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311894 A list of objects, where each <a class="link" href="#def_object">object</a> in the list contains
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411895 a reference to its successor (for example, the successor of a
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311896 <a class="link" href="#def_commit">commit</a> could be one of its <a class="link" href="#def_parent">parents</a>).
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221897</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411898<a name="def_changeset"></a>changeset
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221899</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311900 BitKeeper/cvsps speak for "<a class="link" href="#def_commit">commit</a>". Since git does not
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411901 store changes, but states, it really does not make sense to use the term
1902 "changesets" with git.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221903</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411904<a name="def_checkout"></a>checkout
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221905</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamanoa14a4032008-03-25 09:11:021906 The action of updating all or part of the
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311907 <a class="link" href="#def_working_tree">working tree</a> with a <a class="link" href="#def_tree_object">tree object</a>
1908 or <a class="link" href="#def_blob_object">blob</a> from the
1909 <a class="link" href="#def_object_database">object database</a>, and updating the
1910 <a class="link" href="#def_index">index</a> and <a class="link" href="#def_HEAD">HEAD</a> if the whole working tree has
1911 been pointed at a new <a class="link" href="#def_branch">branch</a>.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221912</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411913<a name="def_cherry-picking"></a>cherry-picking
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221914</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311915 In <a class="link" href="#def_SCM">SCM</a> jargon, "cherry pick" means to choose a subset of
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411916 changes out of a series of changes (typically commits) and record them
Junio C Hamano764a6672007-10-23 01:23:311917 as a new series of changes on top of a different codebase. In GIT, this is
1918 performed by the "git cherry-pick" command to extract the change introduced
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311919 by an existing <a class="link" href="#def_commit">commit</a> and to record it based on the tip
1920 of the current <a class="link" href="#def_branch">branch</a> as a new commit.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221921</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411922<a name="def_clean"></a>clean
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221923</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311924 A <a class="link" href="#def_working_tree">working tree</a> is clean, if it
1925 corresponds to the <a class="link" href="#def_revision">revision</a> referenced by the current
1926 <a class="link" href="#def_head">head</a>. Also see "<a class="link" href="#def_dirty">dirty</a>".
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221927</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411928<a name="def_commit"></a>commit
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331929</span></dt><dd><p>
1930 As a noun: A single point in the
1931 git history; the entire history of a project is represented as a
1932 set of interrelated commits. The word "commit" is often
1933 used by git in the same places other revision control systems
1934 use the words "revision" or "version". Also used as a short
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311935 hand for <a class="link" href="#def_commit_object">commit object</a>.
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331936</p><p>As a verb: The action of storing a new snapshot of the project's
1937state in the git history, by creating a new commit representing the current
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311938state of the <a class="link" href="#def_index">index</a> and advancing <a class="link" href="#def_HEAD">HEAD</a>
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331939to point at the new commit.</p></dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411940<a name="def_commit_object"></a>commit object
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221941</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311942 An <a class="link" href="#def_object">object</a> which contains the information about a
1943 particular <a class="link" href="#def_revision">revision</a>, such as <a class="link" href="#def_parent">parents</a>, committer,
1944 author, date and the <a class="link" href="#def_tree_object">tree object</a> which corresponds
1945 to the top <a class="link" href="#def_directory">directory</a> of the stored
Junio C Hamano36460982007-05-27 04:29:121946 revision.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221947</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411948<a name="def_core_git"></a>core git
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221949</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411950 Fundamental data structures and utilities of git. Exposes only limited
1951 source code management tools.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221952</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411953<a name="def_DAG"></a>DAG
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221954</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311955 Directed acyclic graph. The <a class="link" href="#def_commit_object">commit objects</a> form a
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411956 directed acyclic graph, because they have parents (directed), and the
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311957 graph of commit objects is acyclic (there is no <a class="link" href="#def_chain">chain</a>
1958 which begins and ends with the same <a class="link" href="#def_object">object</a>).
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221959</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411960<a name="def_dangling_object"></a>dangling object
Junio C Hamanoaa83a7d2007-03-05 02:37:291961</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311962 An <a class="link" href="#def_unreachable_object">unreachable object</a> which is not
1963 <a class="link" href="#def_reachable">reachable</a> even from other unreachable objects; a
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331964 dangling object has no references to it from any
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311965 reference or <a class="link" href="#def_object">object</a> in the <a class="link" href="#def_repository">repository</a>.
Junio C Hamanoaa83a7d2007-03-05 02:37:291966</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331967<a name="def_detached_HEAD"></a>detached HEAD
1968</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311969 Normally the <a class="link" href="#def_HEAD">HEAD</a> stores the name of a
1970 <a class="link" href="#def_branch">branch</a>. However, git also allows you to <a class="link" href="#def_checkout">check out</a>
1971 an arbitrary <a class="link" href="#def_commit">commit</a> that isn't necessarily the tip of any
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331972 particular branch. In this case HEAD is said to be "detached".
1973</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411974<a name="def_dircache"></a>dircache
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221975</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311976 You are <span class="strong"><strong>waaaaay</strong></span> behind. See <a class="link" href="#def_index">index</a>.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221977</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411978<a name="def_directory"></a>directory
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221979</span></dt><dd>
1980 The list you get with "ls" :-)
1981</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411982<a name="def_dirty"></a>dirty
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221983</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311984 A <a class="link" href="#def_working_tree">working tree</a> is said to be "dirty" if
1985 it contains modifications which have not been <a class="link" href="#def_commit">committed</a> to the current
1986 <a class="link" href="#def_branch">branch</a>.
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411987</dd><dt><span class="term">
1988<a name="def_ent"></a>ent
1989</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311990 Favorite synonym to "<a class="link" href="#def_tree-ish">tree-ish</a>" by some total geeks. See
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221991 <code class="literal">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ent_(Middle-earth)</code> for an in-depth
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411992 explanation. Avoid this term, not to confuse people.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221993</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano36460982007-05-27 04:29:121994<a name="def_evil_merge"></a>evil merge
1995</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:311996 An evil merge is a <a class="link" href="#def_merge">merge</a> that introduces changes that
1997 do not appear in any <a class="link" href="#def_parent">parent</a>.
Junio C Hamano36460982007-05-27 04:29:121998</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411999<a name="def_fast_forward"></a>fast forward
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222000</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312001 A fast-forward is a special type of <a class="link" href="#def_merge">merge</a> where you have a
2002 <a class="link" href="#def_revision">revision</a> and you are "merging" another
2003 <a class="link" href="#def_branch">branch</a>'s changes that happen to be a descendant of what
2004 you have. In such these cases, you do not make a new <a class="link" href="#def_merge">merge</a>
2005 <a class="link" href="#def_commit">commit</a> but instead just update to his
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:332006 revision. This will happen frequently on a
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312007 <a class="link" href="#def_tracking_branch">tracking branch</a> of a remote
2008 <a class="link" href="#def_repository">repository</a>.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222009</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412010<a name="def_fetch"></a>fetch
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222011</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312012 Fetching a <a class="link" href="#def_branch">branch</a> means to get the
2013 branch's <a class="link" href="#def_head_ref">head ref</a> from a remote
2014 <a class="link" href="#def_repository">repository</a>, to find out which objects are
2015 missing from the local <a class="link" href="#def_object_database">object database</a>,
2016 and to get them, too. See also <a class="ulink" href="git-fetch.html" target="_top">git-fetch(1)</a>.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222017</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412018<a name="def_file_system"></a>file system
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222019</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412020 Linus Torvalds originally designed git to be a user space file system,
2021 i.e. the infrastructure to hold files and directories. That ensured the
2022 efficiency and speed of git.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222023</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412024<a name="def_git_archive"></a>git archive
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222025</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312026 Synonym for <a class="link" href="#def_repository">repository</a> (for arch people).
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222027</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412028<a name="def_grafts"></a>grafts
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222029</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412030 Grafts enables two otherwise different lines of development to be joined
2031 together by recording fake ancestry information for commits. This way
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312032 you can make git pretend the set of <a class="link" href="#def_parent">parents</a> a <a class="link" href="#def_commit">commit</a> has
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:332033 is different from what was recorded when the commit was
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412034 created. Configured via the <code class="literal">.git/info/grafts</code> file.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222035</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412036<a name="def_hash"></a>hash
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222037</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312038 In git's context, synonym to <a class="link" href="#def_object_name">object name</a>.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222039</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412040<a name="def_head"></a>head
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222041</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312042 A <a class="link" href="#def_ref">named reference</a> to the <a class="link" href="#def_commit">commit</a> at the tip of a
2043 <a class="link" href="#def_branch">branch</a>. Heads are stored in
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:332044 <code class="literal">$GIT_DIR/refs/heads/</code>, except when using packed refs. (See
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312045 <a class="ulink" href="git-pack-refs.html" target="_top">git-pack-refs(1)</a>.)
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:332046</dd><dt><span class="term">
2047<a name="def_HEAD"></a>HEAD
2048</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312049 The current <a class="link" href="#def_branch">branch</a>. In more detail: Your <a class="link" href="#def_working_tree">working tree</a> is normally derived from the state of the tree
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:332050 referred to by HEAD. HEAD is a reference to one of the
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312051 <a class="link" href="#def_head">heads</a> in your repository, except when using a
2052 <a class="link" href="#def_detached_HEAD">detached HEAD</a>, in which case it may
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:332053 reference an arbitrary commit.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222054</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412055<a name="def_head_ref"></a>head ref
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222056</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312057 A synonym for <a class="link" href="#def_head">head</a>.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222058</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412059<a name="def_hook"></a>hook
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222060</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412061 During the normal execution of several git commands, call-outs are made
2062 to optional scripts that allow a developer to add functionality or
2063 checking. Typically, the hooks allow for a command to be pre-verified
2064 and potentially aborted, and allow for a post-notification after the
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:332065 operation is done. The hook scripts are found in the
Junio C Hamano36460982007-05-27 04:29:122066 <code class="literal">$GIT_DIR/hooks/</code> directory, and are enabled by simply
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412067 making them executable.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222068</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412069<a name="def_index"></a>index
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222070</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412071 A collection of files with stat information, whose contents are stored
Junio C Hamano36460982007-05-27 04:29:122072 as objects. The index is a stored version of your
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312073 <a class="link" href="#def_working_tree">working tree</a>. Truth be told, it can also contain a second, and even
Junio C Hamano36460982007-05-27 04:29:122074 a third version of a working tree, which are used
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312075 when <a class="link" href="#def_merge">merging</a>.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222076</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412077<a name="def_index_entry"></a>index entry
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222078</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412079 The information regarding a particular file, stored in the
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312080 <a class="link" href="#def_index">index</a>. An index entry can be unmerged, if a
2081 <a class="link" href="#def_merge">merge</a> was started, but not yet finished (i.e. if
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:332082 the index contains multiple versions of that file).
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222083</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412084<a name="def_master"></a>master
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222085</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312086 The default development <a class="link" href="#def_branch">branch</a>. Whenever you
2087 create a git <a class="link" href="#def_repository">repository</a>, a branch named
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:332088 "master" is created, and becomes the active branch. In most
2089 cases, this contains the local development, though that is
2090 purely by convention and is not required.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222091</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412092<a name="def_merge"></a>merge
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:332093</span></dt><dd><p>
2094 As a verb: To bring the contents of another
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312095 <a class="link" href="#def_branch">branch</a> (possibly from an external
2096 <a class="link" href="#def_repository">repository</a>) into the current branch. In the
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:332097 case where the merged-in branch is from a different repository,
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312098 this is done by first <a class="link" href="#def_fetch">fetching</a> the remote branch
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:332099 and then merging the result into the current branch. This
2100 combination of fetch and merge operations is called a
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312101 <a class="link" href="#def_pull">pull</a>. Merging is performed by an automatic process
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:332102 that identifies changes made since the branches diverged, and
2103 then applies all those changes together. In cases where changes
2104 conflict, manual intervention may be required to complete the
2105 merge.
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312106</p><p>As a noun: unless it is a <a class="link" href="#def_fast_forward">fast forward</a>, a
2107successful merge results in the creation of a new <a class="link" href="#def_commit">commit</a>
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:332108representing the result of the merge, and having as
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312109<a class="link" href="#def_parent">parents</a> the tips of the merged <a class="link" href="#def_branch">branches</a>.
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:332110This commit is referred to as a "merge commit", or sometimes just a
2111"merge".</p></dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412112<a name="def_object"></a>object
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222113</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412114 The unit of storage in git. It is uniquely identified by the
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312115 <a class="link" href="#def_SHA1">SHA1</a> of its contents. Consequently, an
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:332116 object can not be changed.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222117</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412118<a name="def_object_database"></a>object database
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222119</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312120 Stores a set of "objects", and an individual <a class="link" href="#def_object">object</a> is
2121 identified by its <a class="link" href="#def_object_name">object name</a>. The objects usually
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412122 live in <code class="literal">$GIT_DIR/objects/</code>.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222123</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412124<a name="def_object_identifier"></a>object identifier
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222125</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312126 Synonym for <a class="link" href="#def_object_name">object name</a>.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222127</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412128<a name="def_object_name"></a>object name
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222129</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312130 The unique identifier of an <a class="link" href="#def_object">object</a>. The <a class="link" href="#def_hash">hash</a>
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:332131 of the object's contents using the Secure Hash Algorithm
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412132 1 and usually represented by the 40 character hexadecimal encoding of
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312133 the <a class="link" href="#def_hash">hash</a> of the object.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222134</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412135<a name="def_object_type"></a>object type
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222136</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312137 One of the identifiers "<a class="link" href="#def_commit_object">commit</a>",
2138 "<a class="link" href="#def_tree_object">tree</a>", "<a class="link" href="#def_tag_object">tag</a>" or
2139 "<a class="link" href="#def_blob_object">blob</a>" describing the type of an
2140 <a class="link" href="#def_object">object</a>.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222141</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412142<a name="def_octopus"></a>octopus
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222143</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312144 To <a class="link" href="#def_merge">merge</a> more than two <a class="link" href="#def_branch">branches</a>. Also denotes an
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412145 intelligent predator.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222146</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412147<a name="def_origin"></a>origin
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222148</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312149 The default upstream <a class="link" href="#def_repository">repository</a>. Most projects have
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412150 at least one upstream project which they track. By default
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:332151 <span class="emphasis"><em>origin</em></span> is used for that purpose. New upstream updates
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312152 will be fetched into remote <a class="link" href="#def_tracking_branch">tracking branches</a> named
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222153 origin/name-of-upstream-branch, which you can see using
Junio C Hamano36460982007-05-27 04:29:122154 "<code class="literal">git branch -r</code>".
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222155</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412156<a name="def_pack"></a>pack
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222157</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412158 A set of objects which have been compressed into one file (to save space
2159 or to transmit them efficiently).
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222160</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412161<a name="def_pack_index"></a>pack index
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222162</span></dt><dd>
2163 The list of identifiers, and other information, of the objects in a
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312164 <a class="link" href="#def_pack">pack</a>, to assist in efficiently accessing the contents of a
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:332165 pack.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222166</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412167<a name="def_parent"></a>parent
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222168</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312169 A <a class="link" href="#def_commit_object">commit object</a> contains a (possibly empty) list
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412170 of the logical predecessor(s) in the line of development, i.e. its
2171 parents.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222172</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412173<a name="def_pickaxe"></a>pickaxe
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222174</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312175 The term <a class="link" href="#def_pickaxe">pickaxe</a> refers to an option to the diffcore
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412176 routines that help select changes that add or delete a given text
Junio C Hamano764a6672007-10-23 01:23:312177 string. With the <code class="literal">—pickaxe-all</code> option, it can be used to view the full
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312178 <a class="link" href="#def_changeset">changeset</a> that introduced or removed, say, a
2179 particular line of text. See <a class="ulink" href="git-diff.html" target="_top">git-diff(1)</a>.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222180</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412181<a name="def_plumbing"></a>plumbing
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222182</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312183 Cute name for <a class="link" href="#def_core_git">core git</a>.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222184</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412185<a name="def_porcelain"></a>porcelain
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222186</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412187 Cute name for programs and program suites depending on
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312188 <a class="link" href="#def_core_git">core git</a>, presenting a high level access to
2189 core git. Porcelains expose more of a <a class="link" href="#def_SCM">SCM</a>
2190 interface than the <a class="link" href="#def_plumbing">plumbing</a>.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222191</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412192<a name="def_pull"></a>pull
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222193</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312194 Pulling a <a class="link" href="#def_branch">branch</a> means to <a class="link" href="#def_fetch">fetch</a> it and
2195 <a class="link" href="#def_merge">merge</a> it. See also <a class="ulink" href="git-pull.html" target="_top">git-pull(1)</a>.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222196</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412197<a name="def_push"></a>push
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222198</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312199 Pushing a <a class="link" href="#def_branch">branch</a> means to get the branch's
2200 <a class="link" href="#def_head_ref">head ref</a> from a remote <a class="link" href="#def_repository">repository</a>,
Junio C Hamano764a6672007-10-23 01:23:312201 find out if it is a direct ancestor to the branch's local
2202 head ref, and in that case, putting all
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312203 objects, which are <a class="link" href="#def_reachable">reachable</a> from the local
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:332204 head ref, and which are missing from the remote
2205 repository, into the remote
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312206 <a class="link" href="#def_object_database">object database</a>, and updating the remote
2207 head ref. If the remote <a class="link" href="#def_head">head</a> is not an
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:332208 ancestor to the local head, the push fails.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222209</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412210<a name="def_reachable"></a>reachable
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222211</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312212 All of the ancestors of a given <a class="link" href="#def_commit">commit</a> are said to be
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:332213 "reachable" from that commit. More
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312214 generally, one <a class="link" href="#def_object">object</a> is reachable from
2215 another if we can reach the one from the other by a <a class="link" href="#def_chain">chain</a>
2216 that follows <a class="link" href="#def_tag">tags</a> to whatever they tag,
2217 <a class="link" href="#def_commit_object">commits</a> to their parents or trees, and
2218 <a class="link" href="#def_tree_object">trees</a> to the trees or <a class="link" href="#def_blob_object">blobs</a>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412219 that they contain.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222220</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412221<a name="def_rebase"></a>rebase
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222222</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312223 To reapply a series of changes from a <a class="link" href="#def_branch">branch</a> to a
2224 different base, and reset the <a class="link" href="#def_head">head</a> of that branch
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412225 to the result.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222226</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412227<a name="def_ref"></a>ref
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222228</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312229 A 40-byte hex representation of a <a class="link" href="#def_SHA1">SHA1</a> or a name that
2230 denotes a particular <a class="link" href="#def_object">object</a>. These may be stored in
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412231 <code class="literal">$GIT_DIR/refs/</code>.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222232</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamanobb0f4042007-07-04 06:41:402233<a name="def_reflog"></a>reflog
2234</span></dt><dd>
2235 A reflog shows the local "history" of a ref. In other words,
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312236 it can tell you what the 3rd last revision in <span class="emphasis"><em>this</em></span> repository
2237 was, and what was the current state in <span class="emphasis"><em>this</em></span> repository,
2238 yesterday 9:14pm. See <a class="ulink" href="git-reflog.html" target="_top">git-reflog(1)</a> for details.
Junio C Hamanobb0f4042007-07-04 06:41:402239</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412240<a name="def_refspec"></a>refspec
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222241</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312242 A "refspec" is used by <a class="link" href="#def_fetch">fetch</a> and
2243 <a class="link" href="#def_push">push</a> to describe the mapping between remote
2244 <a class="link" href="#def_ref">ref</a> and local ref. They are combined with a colon in
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:332245 the format &lt;src&gt;:&lt;dst&gt;, preceded by an optional plus sign, +.
2246 For example: <code class="literal">git fetch $URL
2247 refs/heads/master:refs/heads/origin</code> means "grab the master
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312248 <a class="link" href="#def_branch">branch</a> <a class="link" href="#def_head">head</a> from the $URL and store
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:332249 it as my origin branch head". And <code class="literal">git push
2250 $URL refs/heads/master:refs/heads/to-upstream</code> means "publish my
2251 master branch head as to-upstream branch at $URL". See also
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312252 <a class="ulink" href="git-push.html" target="_top">git-push(1)</a>.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222253</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412254<a name="def_repository"></a>repository
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222255</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312256 A collection of <a class="link" href="#def_ref">refs</a> together with an
2257 <a class="link" href="#def_object_database">object database</a> containing all objects
2258 which are <a class="link" href="#def_reachable">reachable</a> from the refs, possibly
2259 accompanied by meta data from one or more <a class="link" href="#def_porcelain">porcelains</a>. A
Junio C Hamano36460982007-05-27 04:29:122260 repository can share an object database with other repositories
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312261 via <a class="link" href="#def_alternate_object_database">alternates mechanism</a>.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222262</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412263<a name="def_resolve"></a>resolve
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222264</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412265 The action of fixing up manually what a failed automatic
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312266 <a class="link" href="#def_merge">merge</a> left behind.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222267</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412268<a name="def_revision"></a>revision
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222269</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412270 A particular state of files and directories which was stored in the
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312271 <a class="link" href="#def_object_database">object database</a>. It is referenced by a
2272 <a class="link" href="#def_commit_object">commit object</a>.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222273</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412274<a name="def_rewind"></a>rewind
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222275</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412276 To throw away part of the development, i.e. to assign the
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312277 <a class="link" href="#def_head">head</a> to an earlier <a class="link" href="#def_revision">revision</a>.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222278</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412279<a name="def_SCM"></a>SCM
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222280</span></dt><dd>
2281 Source code management (tool).
2282</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412283<a name="def_SHA1"></a>SHA1
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222284</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312285 Synonym for <a class="link" href="#def_object_name">object name</a>.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222286</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412287<a name="def_shallow_repository"></a>shallow repository
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222288</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312289 A shallow <a class="link" href="#def_repository">repository</a> has an incomplete
2290 history some of whose <a class="link" href="#def_commit">commits</a> have <a class="link" href="#def_parent">parents</a> cauterized away (in other
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412291 words, git is told to pretend that these commits do not have the
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312292 parents, even though they are recorded in the <a class="link" href="#def_commit_object">commit object</a>). This is sometimes useful when you are interested only in the
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412293 recent history of a project even though the real history recorded in the
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:332294 upstream is much larger. A shallow repository
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312295 is created by giving the <code class="literal">—depth</code> option to <a class="ulink" href="git-clone.html" target="_top">git-clone(1)</a>, and
2296 its history can be later deepened with <a class="ulink" href="git-fetch.html" target="_top">git-fetch(1)</a>.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222297</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412298<a name="def_symref"></a>symref
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222299</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312300 Symbolic reference: instead of containing the <a class="link" href="#def_SHA1">SHA1</a>
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:332301 id itself, it is of the format <span class="emphasis"><em>ref: refs/some/thing</em></span> and when
2302 referenced, it recursively dereferences to this reference.
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312303 <span class="emphasis"><em><a class="link" href="#def_HEAD">HEAD</a></em></span> is a prime example of a symref. Symbolic
2304 references are manipulated with the <a class="ulink" href="git-symbolic-ref.html" target="_top">git-symbolic-ref(1)</a>
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:332305 command.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222306</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412307<a name="def_tag"></a>tag
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222308</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312309 A <a class="link" href="#def_ref">ref</a> pointing to a <a class="link" href="#def_tag_object">tag</a> or
2310 <a class="link" href="#def_commit_object">commit object</a>. In contrast to a <a class="link" href="#def_head">head</a>,
2311 a tag is not changed by a <a class="link" href="#def_commit">commit</a>. Tags (not
2312 <a class="link" href="#def_tag_object">tag objects</a>) are stored in <code class="literal">$GIT_DIR/refs/tags/</code>. A
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412313 git tag has nothing to do with a Lisp tag (which would be
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312314 called an <a class="link" href="#def_object_type">object type</a> in git's context). A
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412315 tag is most typically used to mark a particular point in the
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312316 commit ancestry <a class="link" href="#def_chain">chain</a>.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222317</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412318<a name="def_tag_object"></a>tag object
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222319</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312320 An <a class="link" href="#def_object">object</a> containing a <a class="link" href="#def_ref">ref</a> pointing to
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:332321 another object, which can contain a message just like a
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312322 <a class="link" href="#def_commit_object">commit object</a>. It can also contain a (PGP)
Junio C Hamano36460982007-05-27 04:29:122323 signature, in which case it is called a "signed tag object".
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222324</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412325<a name="def_topic_branch"></a>topic branch
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222326</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312327 A regular git <a class="link" href="#def_branch">branch</a> that is used by a developer to
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412328 identify a conceptual line of development. Since branches are very easy
2329 and inexpensive, it is often desirable to have several small branches
2330 that each contain very well defined concepts or small incremental yet
2331 related changes.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222332</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412333<a name="def_tracking_branch"></a>tracking branch
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222334</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312335 A regular git <a class="link" href="#def_branch">branch</a> that is used to follow changes from
2336 another <a class="link" href="#def_repository">repository</a>. A tracking
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:332337 branch should not contain direct modifications or have local commits
2338 made to it. A tracking branch can usually be
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312339 identified as the right-hand-side <a class="link" href="#def_ref">ref</a> in a Pull:
2340 <a class="link" href="#def_refspec">refspec</a>.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222341</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412342<a name="def_tree"></a>tree
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222343</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312344 Either a <a class="link" href="#def_working_tree">working tree</a>, or a <a class="link" href="#def_tree_object">tree object</a> together with the dependent <a class="link" href="#def_blob_object">blob</a> and tree objects
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:332345 (i.e. a stored representation of a working tree).
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222346</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412347<a name="def_tree_object"></a>tree object
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222348</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312349 An <a class="link" href="#def_object">object</a> containing a list of file names and modes along
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412350 with refs to the associated blob and/or tree objects. A
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312351 <a class="link" href="#def_tree">tree</a> is equivalent to a <a class="link" href="#def_directory">directory</a>.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222352</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412353<a name="def_tree-ish"></a>tree-ish
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222354</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312355 A <a class="link" href="#def_ref">ref</a> pointing to either a <a class="link" href="#def_commit_object">commit object</a>, a <a class="link" href="#def_tree_object">tree object</a>, or a <a class="link" href="#def_tag_object">tag object</a> pointing to a tag or commit or tree object.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222356</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412357<a name="def_unmerged_index"></a>unmerged index
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222358</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312359 An <a class="link" href="#def_index">index</a> which contains unmerged
2360 <a class="link" href="#def_index_entry">index entries</a>.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222361</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412362<a name="def_unreachable_object"></a>unreachable object
Junio C Hamanoaa83a7d2007-03-05 02:37:292363</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312364 An <a class="link" href="#def_object">object</a> which is not <a class="link" href="#def_reachable">reachable</a> from a
2365 <a class="link" href="#def_branch">branch</a>, <a class="link" href="#def_tag">tag</a>, or any other reference.
Junio C Hamanoaa83a7d2007-03-05 02:37:292366</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412367<a name="def_working_tree"></a>working tree
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222368</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:332369 The tree of actual checked out files. The working tree is
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312370 normally equal to the <a class="link" href="#def_HEAD">HEAD</a> plus any local changes
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:332371 that you have made but not yet committed.
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:432372</dd></dl></div></div><div class="appendix" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title"><a name="git-quick-start"></a>Appendix A. Git Quick Reference</h2></div></div></div><div class="toc"><p><b>Table of Contents</b></p><dl><dt><span class="section"><a href="#quick-creating-a-new-repository">Creating a new repository</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#managing-branches">Managing branches</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#exploring-history">Exploring history</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#making-changes">Making changes</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#merging">Merging</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#sharing-your-changes">Sharing your changes</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#repository-maintenance">Repository maintenance</a></span></dt></dl></div><p>This is a quick summary of the major commands; the previous chapters
2373explain how these work in more detail.</p><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="quick-creating-a-new-repository"></a>Creating a new repository</h2></div></div></div><p>From a tarball:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ tar xzf project.tar.gz<br>
2374$ cd project<br>
2375$ git init<br>
2376Initialized empty Git repository in .git/<br>
2377$ git add .<br>
2378$ git commit</p></div><p>From a remote repository:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git clone git://example.com/pub/project.git<br>
2379$ cd project</p></div></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="managing-branches"></a>Managing branches</h2></div></div></div><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git branch         # list all local branches in this repo<br>
2380$ git checkout test  # switch working directory to branch "test"<br>
2381$ git branch new     # create branch "new" starting at current HEAD<br>
Junio C Hamano764a6672007-10-23 01:23:312382$ git branch -d new  # delete branch "new"</p></div><p>Instead of basing a new branch on current HEAD (the default), use:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git branch new test    # branch named "test"<br>
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:432383$ git branch new v2.6.15 # tag named v2.6.15<br>
2384$ git branch new HEAD^   # commit before the most recent<br>
2385$ git branch new HEAD^^  # commit before that<br>
2386$ git branch new test~10 # ten commits before tip of branch "test"</p></div><p>Create and switch to a new branch at the same time:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git checkout -b new v2.6.15</p></div><p>Update and examine branches from the repository you cloned from:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git fetch             # update<br>
2387$ git branch -r         # list<br>
2388  origin/master<br>
2389  origin/next<br>
2390  ...<br>
2391$ git checkout -b masterwork origin/master</p></div><p>Fetch a branch from a different repository, and give it a new
2392name in your repository:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git fetch git://example.com/project.git theirbranch:mybranch<br>
2393$ git fetch git://example.com/project.git v2.6.15:mybranch</p></div><p>Keep a list of repositories you work with regularly:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git remote add example git://example.com/project.git<br>
2394$ git remote                    # list remote repositories<br>
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:332395example<br>
2396origin<br>
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:432397$ git remote show example       # get details<br>
2398* remote example<br>
2399  URL: git://example.com/project.git<br>
2400  Tracked remote branches<br>
2401    master next ...<br>
2402$ git fetch example             # update branches from example<br>
2403$ git branch -r                 # list all remote branches</p></div></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="exploring-history"></a>Exploring history</h2></div></div></div><div class="literallayout"><p>$ gitk                      # visualize and browse history<br>
2404$ git log                   # list all commits<br>
2405$ git log src/              # ...modifying src/<br>
2406$ git log v2.6.15..v2.6.16  # ...in v2.6.16, not in v2.6.15<br>
2407$ git log master..test      # ...in branch test, not in branch master<br>
2408$ git log test..master      # ...in branch master, but not in test<br>
2409$ git log test...master     # ...in one branch, not in both<br>
2410$ git log -S'foo()'         # ...where difference contain "foo()"<br>
2411$ git log --since="2 weeks ago"<br>
2412$ git log -p                # show patches as well<br>
2413$ git show                  # most recent commit<br>
2414$ git diff v2.6.15..v2.6.16 # diff between two tagged versions<br>
2415$ git diff v2.6.15..HEAD    # diff with current head<br>
2416$ git grep "foo()"          # search working directory for "foo()"<br>
2417$ git grep v2.6.15 "foo()"  # search old tree for "foo()"<br>
2418$ git show v2.6.15:a.txt    # look at old version of a.txt</p></div><p>Search for regressions:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git bisect start<br>
2419$ git bisect bad                # current version is bad<br>
2420$ git bisect good v2.6.13-rc2   # last known good revision<br>
2421Bisecting: 675 revisions left to test after this<br>
2422                                # test here, then:<br>
2423$ git bisect good               # if this revision is good, or<br>
2424$ git bisect bad                # if this revision is bad.<br>
2425                                # repeat until done.</p></div></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="making-changes"></a>Making changes</h2></div></div></div><p>Make sure git knows who to blame:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ cat &gt;&gt;~/.gitconfig &lt;&lt;\EOF<br>
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:332426[user]<br>
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:432427        name = Your Name Comes Here<br>
2428        email = you@yourdomain.example.com<br>
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:332429EOF</p></div><p>Select file contents to include in the next commit, then make the
Junio C Hamanocc13f552007-07-24 08:59:432430commit:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git add a.txt    # updated file<br>
2431$ git add b.txt    # new file<br>
2432$ git rm c.txt     # old file<br>
2433$ git commit</p></div><p>Or, prepare and create the commit in one step:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git commit d.txt # use latest content only of d.txt<br>
2434$ git commit -a    # use latest content of all tracked files</p></div></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="merging"></a>Merging</h2></div></div></div><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git merge test   # merge branch "test" into the current branch<br>
2435$ git pull git://example.com/project.git master<br>
2436                   # fetch and merge in remote branch<br>
2437$ git pull . test  # equivalent to git merge test</p></div></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="sharing-your-changes"></a>Sharing your changes</h2></div></div></div><p>Importing or exporting patches:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git format-patch origin..HEAD # format a patch for each commit<br>
2438                                # in HEAD but not in origin<br>
2439$ git am mbox # import patches from the mailbox "mbox"</p></div><p>Fetch a branch in a different git repository, then merge into the
2440current branch:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git pull git://example.com/project.git theirbranch</p></div><p>Store the fetched branch into a local branch before merging into the
2441current branch:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git pull git://example.com/project.git theirbranch:mybranch</p></div><p>After creating commits on a local branch, update the remote
2442branch with your commits:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git push ssh://example.com/project.git mybranch:theirbranch</p></div><p>When remote and local branch are both named "test":</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git push ssh://example.com/project.git test</p></div><p>Shortcut version for a frequently used remote repository:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git remote add example ssh://example.com/project.git<br>
Junio C Hamano597ffcf2007-09-17 17:33:152443$ git push example test</p></div></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="repository-maintenance"></a>Repository maintenance</h2></div></div></div><p>Check for corruption:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git fsck</p></div><p>Recompress, remove unused cruft:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git gc</p></div></div></div><div class="appendix" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title"><a name="todo"></a>Appendix B. Notes and todo list for this manual</h2></div></div></div><p>This is a work in progress.</p><p>The basic requirements:</p><div class="itemizedlist"><ul type="disc"><li>
2444It must be readable in order, from beginning to end, by someone
2445 intelligent with a basic grasp of the UNIX command line, but without
2446 any special knowledge of git. If necessary, any other prerequisites
2447 should be specifically mentioned as they arise.
2448</li><li>
2449Whenever possible, section headings should clearly describe the task
2450 they explain how to do, in language that requires no more knowledge
2451 than necessary: for example, "importing patches into a project" rather
2452 than "the git-am command"
2453</li></ul></div><p>Think about how to create a clear chapter dependency graph that will
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222454allow people to get to important topics without necessarily reading
Junio C Hamano597ffcf2007-09-17 17:33:152455everything in between.</p><p>Scan Documentation/ for other stuff left out; in particular:</p><div class="itemizedlist"><ul type="disc"><li>
2456howto's
2457</li><li>
2458some of technical/?
2459</li><li>
2460hooks
2461</li><li>
Junio C Hamanoba4b9282008-07-06 05:20:312462list of commands in <a class="ulink" href="git.html" target="_top">git(1)</a>
Junio C Hamano597ffcf2007-09-17 17:33:152463</li></ul></div><p>Scan email archives for other stuff left out</p><p>Scan man pages to see if any assume more background than this manual
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222464provides.</p><p>Simplify beginning by suggesting disconnected head instead of
Junio C Hamanoaa83a7d2007-03-05 02:37:292465temporary branch creation?</p><p>Add more good examples. Entire sections of just cookbook examples
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222466might be a good idea; maybe make an "advanced examples" section a
2467standard end-of-chapter section?</p><p>Include cross-references to the glossary, where appropriate.</p><p>Document shallow clones? See draft 1.5.0 release notes for some
Junio C Hamanoee1e4282007-02-04 08:32:042468documentation.</p><p>Add a section on working with other version control systems, including
Junio C Hamanoce3650e2007-11-26 04:20:112469CVS, Subversion, and just imports of series of release tarballs.</p><p>More details on gitweb?</p><p>Write a chapter on using plumbing and writing scripts.</p><p>Alternates, clone -reference, etc.</p><p>More on recovery from repository corruption. See:
2470 http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=git&amp;m=117263864820799&amp;w=2
2471 http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=git&amp;m=117147855503798&amp;w=2
2472 http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=git&amp;m=117147855503798&amp;w=2</p></div></div></body></html>