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Junio C Hamanoed7f4f62007-05-20 09:09:091<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"><title>Git User's Manual (for version 1.5.1 or newer)</title><link rel="stylesheet" href="docbook-xsl.css" type="text/css"><meta name="generator" content="DocBook XSL Stylesheets V1.69.1"></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="id232635"></a>Git User's Manual (for version 1.5.1 or newer)</h1></div></div><hr></div><div class="toc"><p><b>Table of Contents</b></p><dl><dt><span class="preface"><a href="#id264704">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></dl></dd><dt><span class="section"><a href="#id274842">Finding commits referencing a file with given content</a></span></dt></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-editing-history">Fixing a mistake by editing history</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#checkout-of-path">Checking out an old version of a file</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="#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="#modifying-one-commit">Modifying 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></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-internals">7. Git internals</a></span></dt><dd><dl><dt><span class="section"><a href="#the-object-database">The Object Database</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#blob-object">Blob Object</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#tree-object">Tree Object</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#commit-object">Commit 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="#the-index">The "index" aka "Current Directory Cache"</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><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="#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">8. GIT Glossary</a></span></dt><dt><span class="appendix"><a href="#git-quick-start">A. Git Quick Start</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="id264704"></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 Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:332command-line skills, but no previous knowledge of git.</p><p><a href="#repositories-and-branches" title="Chapter 1. Repositories and Branches">Chapter 1, <i>Repositories and Branches</i></a> and <a href="#exploring-git-history" title="Chapter 2. Exploring git history">Chapter 2, <i>Exploring git history</i></a> explain how
3to fetch and study a project using git&#8212;read these chapters to learn how
4to 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
6<a href="#Developing-with-git" title="Chapter 3. Developing with git">Chapter 3, <i>Developing with git</i></a> and <a 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", just use</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ man git-clone</p></div><p>See also <a href="#git-quick-start" title="Appendix A. Git Quick Start">Appendix A, <i>Git Quick Start</i></a> for a brief overview of git commands,
8without any explanation.</p><p>Also, see <a 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
9complete.</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 Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:2210read this manual.</p><p>The best way to get one is by using the <a href="git-clone.html" target="_top">git-clone(1)</a> command
11to download a copy of an existing repository for a project that you
12are interested in. If you don't already have a project in mind, here
13are some interesting examples:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>        # git itself (approx. 10MB download):<br>
14$ git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/git/git.git<br>
15        # the linux kernel (approx. 150MB download):<br>
16$ 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
17will only need to clone once.</p><p>The clone command creates a new directory named after the project
18("git" or "linux-2.6" in the examples above). After you cd into this
19directory, you will see that it contains a copy of the project files,
20together with a special top-level directory named ".git", which
21contains all the information about the history of the project.</p><p>In most of the following, examples will be taken from one of the two
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:5322repositories above.</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
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:2223collection of files. It stores the history as a compressed
24collection of interrelated snapshots (versions) of the project's
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:4125contents.</p><p>A single git repository may contain multiple branches. It keeps track
26of them by keeping a list of <a href="#def_head">heads</a> which reference the
27latest version on each branch; the <a href="git-branch.html" target="_top">git-branch(1)</a> command shows
28you the list of branch heads:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git branch<br>
Junio C Hamano0e3cb532007-04-17 08:28:1129* master</p></div><p>A freshly cloned repository contains a single branch head, by default
30named "master", with the working directory initialized to the state of
31the project referred to by that branch head.</p><p>Most projects also use <a href="#def_tag">tags</a>. Tags, like heads, are
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:4132references into the project's history, and can be listed using the
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:2233<a href="git-tag.html" target="_top">git-tag(1)</a> command:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git tag -l<br>
34v2.6.11<br>
35v2.6.11-tree<br>
36v2.6.12<br>
37v2.6.12-rc2<br>
38v2.6.12-rc3<br>
39v2.6.12-rc4<br>
40v2.6.12-rc5<br>
41v2.6.12-rc6<br>
42v2.6.13<br>
43...</p></div><p>Tags are expected to always point at the same version of a project,
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:4144while 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 Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:2245out using <a 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
46when it was tagged v2.6.13, and <a href="git-branch.html" target="_top">git-branch(1)</a> shows two
47branches, with an asterisk marking the currently checked-out branch:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git branch<br>
48  master<br>
49* new</p></div><p>If you decide that you'd rather see version 2.6.17, you can modify
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:4150the 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 00:22:2251particular point in history, then resetting that branch may leave you
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:4152with no way to find the history it used to point to; so use this command
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:5353carefully.</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 Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:2254The <a href="git-show.html" target="_top">git-show(1)</a> command shows the most recent commit on the
55current branch:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git show<br>
56commit 2b5f6dcce5bf94b9b119e9ed8d537098ec61c3d2<br>
57Author: Jamal Hadi Salim &lt;hadi@cyberus.ca&gt;<br>
58Date:   Sat Dec 2 22:22:25 2006 -0800<br>
59<br>
60    [XFRM]: Fix aevent structuring to be more complete.<br>
61<br>
62    aevents can not uniquely identify an SA. We break the ABI with this<br>
63    patch, but consensus is that since it is not yet utilized by any<br>
64    (known) application then it is fine (better do it now than later).<br>
65<br>
66    Signed-off-by: Jamal Hadi Salim &lt;hadi@cyberus.ca&gt;<br>
67    Signed-off-by: David S. Miller &lt;davem@davemloft.net&gt;<br>
68<br>
69diff --git a/Documentation/networking/xfrm_sync.txt b/Documentation/networking/xfrm_sync.txt<br>
70index 8be626f..d7aac9d 100644<br>
71--- a/Documentation/networking/xfrm_sync.txt<br>
72+++ b/Documentation/networking/xfrm_sync.txt<br>
73@@ -47,10 +47,13 @@ aevent_id structure looks like:<br>
74<br>
75    struct xfrm_aevent_id {<br>
76              struct xfrm_usersa_id           sa_id;<br>
77+             xfrm_address_t                  saddr;<br>
78              __u32                           flags;<br>
79+             __u32                           reqid;<br>
80    };<br>
81...</p></div><p>As you can see, a commit shows who made the latest change, what they
Junio C Hamanoaa83a7d2007-03-05 02:37:2982did, and why.</p><p>Every commit has a 40-hexdigit id, sometimes called the "object name" or the
83"SHA1 id", shown on the first line of the "git show" output. You can usually
84refer to a commit by a shorter name, such as a tag or a branch name, but this
85longer name can also be useful. Most importantly, it is a globally unique
86name for this commit: so if you tell somebody else the object name (for
87example in email), then you are guaranteed that name will refer to the same
88commit in their repository that it does in yours (assuming their repository
89has that commit at all). Since the object name is computed as a hash over the
90contents of the commit, you are guaranteed that the commit can never change
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:3391without its name also changing.</p><p>In fact, in <a href="#git-internals" title="Chapter 7. Git internals">Chapter 7, <i>Git internals</i></a> we shall see that everything stored in git
Junio C Hamanoaa83a7d2007-03-05 02:37:2992history, including file data and directory contents, is stored in an object
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:5393with 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 00:22:2294parent commit which shows what happened before this commit.
95Following the chain of parents will eventually take you back to the
96beginning of the project.</p><p>However, the commits do not form a simple list; git allows lines of
97development to diverge and then reconverge, and the point where two
98lines of development reconverge is called a "merge". The commit
99representing a merge can therefore have more than one parent, with
100each parent representing the most recent commit on one of the lines
101of development leading to that point.</p><p>The best way to see how this works is using the <a href="gitk.html" target="_top">gitk(1)</a>
102command; running gitk now on a git repository and looking for merge
103commits will help understand how the git organizes history.</p><p>In the following, we say that commit X is "reachable" from commit Y
104if commit X is an ancestor of commit Y. Equivalently, you could say
105that Y is a descendent of X, or that there is a chain of parents
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:53106leading 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 00:22:22107below. Commits are shown as "o", and the links between them with
Junio C Hamanoc51fede2007-03-12 07:29:20108lines drawn with - / and \. Time goes left to right:</p><pre class="literallayout"> o--o--o &lt;-- Branch A
109 /
110 o--o--o &lt;-- master
111 \
112 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 00:32:53113be 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 02:33:41114of development, and "branch head" (or just "head") to mean a reference
115to the most recent commit on a branch. In the example above, the branch
116head named "A" is a pointer to one particular commit, but we refer to
117the line of three commits leading up to that point as all being part of
118"branch A".</p><p>However, when no confusion will result, we often just use the term
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:53119"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 00:22:22120a summary of the commands:</p><div class="variablelist"><dl><dt><span class="term">
121git branch
122</span></dt><dd>
123 list all branches
124</dd><dt><span class="term">
125git branch &lt;branch&gt;
126</span></dt><dd>
127 create a new branch named &lt;branch&gt;, referencing the same
128 point in history as the current branch
129</dd><dt><span class="term">
130git branch &lt;branch&gt; &lt;start-point&gt;
131</span></dt><dd>
132 create a new branch named &lt;branch&gt;, referencing
133 &lt;start-point&gt;, which may be specified any way you like,
134 including using a branch name or a tag name
135</dd><dt><span class="term">
136git branch -d &lt;branch&gt;
137</span></dt><dd>
138 delete the branch &lt;branch&gt;; if the branch you are deleting
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:53139 points to a commit which is not reachable from the current
140 branch, this command will fail with a warning.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22141</dd><dt><span class="term">
142git branch -D &lt;branch&gt;
143</span></dt><dd>
144 even if the branch points to a commit not reachable
145 from the current branch, you may know that that commit
146 is still reachable from some other branch or tag. In that
147 case it is safe to use this command to force git to delete
148 the branch.
149</dd><dt><span class="term">
150git checkout &lt;branch&gt;
151</span></dt><dd>
152 make the current branch &lt;branch&gt;, updating the working
153 directory to reflect the version referenced by &lt;branch&gt;
154</dd><dt><span class="term">
155git checkout -b &lt;new&gt; &lt;start-point&gt;
156</span></dt><dd>
157 create a new branch &lt;new&gt; referencing &lt;start-point&gt;, and
158 check it out.
Junio C Hamano0e3cb532007-04-17 08:28:11159</dd></dl></div><p>The special symbol "HEAD" can always be used to refer to the current
160branch. In fact, git uses a file named "HEAD" in the .git directory to
161remember which branch is current:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ cat .git/HEAD<br>
162ref: 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
163accept an arbitrary commit; for example, you can check out the commit
164referenced by a tag:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git checkout v2.6.17<br>
165Note: moving to "v2.6.17" which isn't a local branch<br>
166If you want to create a new branch from this checkout, you may do so<br>
167(now or later) by using -b with the checkout command again. Example:<br>
168  git checkout -b &lt;new_branch_name&gt;<br>
169HEAD 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,
170and git branch shows that you are no longer on a branch:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ cat .git/HEAD<br>
171427abfa28afedffadfca9dd8b067eb6d36bac53f<br>
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:53172$ git branch<br>
Junio C Hamano0e3cb532007-04-17 08:28:11173* (no branch)<br>
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:53174  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
175make up a name for the new branch. You can still create a new branch
176(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 00:22:22177of the HEAD in the repository that you cloned from. That repository
178may also have had other branches, though, and your local repository
179keeps branches which track each of those remote branches, which you
180can view using the "-r" option to <a href="git-branch.html" target="_top">git-branch(1)</a>:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git branch -r<br>
181  origin/HEAD<br>
182  origin/html<br>
183  origin/maint<br>
184  origin/man<br>
185  origin/master<br>
186  origin/next<br>
187  origin/pu<br>
188  origin/todo</p></div><p>You cannot check out these remote-tracking branches, but you can
189examine 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
190to 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
191commits. All references are named with a slash-separated path name
192starting with "refs"; the names we've been using so far are actually
193shorthand:</p><div class="itemizedlist"><ul type="disc"><li>
194The branch "test" is short for "refs/heads/test".
195</li><li>
196The tag "v2.6.18" is short for "refs/tags/v2.6.18".
197</li><li>
198"origin/master" is short for "refs/remotes/origin/master".
199</li></ul></div><p>The full name is occasionally useful if, for example, there ever
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:53200exists a tag and a branch with the same name.</p><p>As another useful shortcut, the "HEAD" of a repository can be referred
201to 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
205REVISIONS" section of <a 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
206repository, 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
209repository. It will not touch any of your own branches&#8212;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 Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22211cloned from, using <a 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 Hamano4c6aa8a2007-04-04 08:56:37212$ git fetch linux-nfs<br>
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22213* 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
215that you gave "git remote add", in this case linux-nfs:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git branch -r<br>
216linux-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
219a new stanza:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ cat .git/config<br>
220...<br>
221[remote "linux-nfs"]<br>
Junio C Hamanoc51fede2007-03-12 07:29:20222        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 Hamanoed7f4f62007-05-20 09:09:09227<a 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></dl></dd><dt><span class="section"><a href="#id274842">Finding commits referencing a file with given content</a></span></dt></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
229the contents of a file heirarchy, together with "commits" which show
230the 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
236<a 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>
237$ 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
241temporarily moved you to a new branch named "bisect". This branch
242points to a commit (with commit id 65934&#8230;) that is reachable from
243v2.6.19 but not from v2.6.18. Compile and test it, and see whether
244it crashes. Assume it does crash. Then:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git bisect bad<br>
245Bisecting: 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
247stage 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
251<a href="git-show.html" target="_top">git-show(1)</a>, find out who wrote it, and mail them your bug
252report 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 and delete the
253temporary "bisect" branch.</p><p>Note that the version which git-bisect checks out for you at each
254point is just a suggestion, and you're free to try a different
255version if you think it would be a good idea. For example,
256occasionally you may land on a commit that broke something unrelated;
Junio C Hamano4c6aa8a2007-04-04 08:56:37257run</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 Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22258says "bisect". Chose a safe-looking commit nearby, note its commit
259id, 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 Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:53260continue.</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 00:22:2226140-hexdigit object name
262</li><li>
263branch name: refers to the commit at the head of the given
264 branch
265</li><li>
266tag name: refers to the commit pointed to by the given tag
267 (we've seen branches and tags are special cases of
268 <a href="#how-git-stores-references" title="Naming branches, tags, and other references">references</a>).
269</li><li>
270HEAD: refers to the head of the current branch
271</li></ul></div><p>There are many more; see the "SPECIFYING REVISIONS" section of the
272<a href="git-rev-parse.html" target="_top">git-rev-parse(1)</a> man page for the complete list of ways to
273name revisions. Some examples:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git show fb47ddb2 # the first few characters of the object name<br>
274                    # are usually enough to specify it uniquely<br>
275$ git show HEAD^    # the parent of the HEAD commit<br>
276$ git show HEAD^^   # the grandparent<br>
277$ git show HEAD~4   # the great-great-grandparent</p></div><p>Recall that merge commits may have more than one parent; by default,
278^ and ~ follow the first parent listed in the commit, but you can
279also choose:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git show HEAD^1   # show the first parent of HEAD<br>
280$ git show HEAD^2   # show the second parent of HEAD</p></div><p>In addition to HEAD, there are several other special names for
281commits:</p><p>Merges (to be discussed later), as well as operations such as
282git-reset, which change the currently checked-out commit, generally
283set 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
284branch in FETCH_HEAD. For example, if you run git fetch without
285specifying 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,
286which refers to the other branch that we're merging in to the current
287branch.</p><p>The <a href="git-rev-parse.html" target="_top">git-rev-parse(1)</a> command is a low-level command that is
288occasionally useful for translating some name for a commit to the object
289name for that commit:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git rev-parse origin<br>
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:53290e05db0fd4f31dde7005f075a84f96b360d05984b</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
291running</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
292comment with the tag, and possibly sign it cryptographically, then you
293should create a tag object instead; see the <a href="git-tag.html" target="_top">git-tag(1)</a> man page
294for 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 href="git-log.html" target="_top">git-log(1)</a> command can show lists of commits. On its
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22295own, it shows all commits reachable from the parent commit; but you
296can also make more specific requests:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git log v2.5..        # commits since (not reachable from) v2.5<br>
297$ git log test..master  # commits reachable from master but not test<br>
298$ git log master..test  # ...reachable from test but not master<br>
299$ git log master...test # ...reachable from either test or master,<br>
300                        #    but not both<br>
301$ git log --since="2 weeks ago" # commits from the last 2 weeks<br>
302$ git log Makefile      # commits which modify Makefile<br>
303$ git log fs/           # ... which modify any file under fs/<br>
304$ git log -S'foo()'     # commits which add or remove any file data<br>
305                        # matching the string 'foo()'</p></div><p>And of course you can combine all of these; the following finds
306commits 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 "&#8212;pretty" option in the <a href="git-log.html" target="_top">git-log(1)</a> man page for more
307display options.</p><p>Note that git log starts with the most recent commit and works
308backwards through the parents; however, since git history can contain
Junio C Hamanoee1e4282007-02-04 08:32:04309multiple independent lines of development, the particular order that
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:53310commits 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 Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22311<a href="git-diff.html" target="_top">git-diff(1)</a>:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git diff master..test</p></div><p>Sometimes what you want instead is a set of patches:</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
312but not from master. Note that if master also has commits which are
313not reachable from test, then the combined result of these patches
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:53314will not be the same as the diff produced by the git-diff example.</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 00:22:22315correct revision first. But sometimes it is more convenient to be
316able to view an old version of a single file without checking
317anything 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 04:20:33318may 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"
319since 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
320lower-level command <a href="git-rev-list.html" target="_top">git-rev-list(1)</a>, which just lists the SHA1's
321of 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
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22322in 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
323two branches; in theory, however, it's possible that the same project
324contents could have been arrived at by two different historical
325routes. You could compare the object names:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git rev-list origin<br>
326e05db0fd4f31dde7005f075a84f96b360d05984b<br>
327$ git rev-list master<br>
328e05db0fd4f31dde7005f075a84f96b360d05984b</p></div><p>Or you could recall that the &#8230; operator selects all commits
329contained reachable from either one reference or the other but not
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:53330both: 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 00:22:22331You'd like to find the earliest tagged release that contains that
332fix.</p><p>Of course, there may be more than one answer&#8212;if the history branched
333after commit e05db0fd, then there could be multiple "earliest" tagged
334releases.</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 href="git-name-rev.html" target="_top">git-name-rev(1)</a>, which will give the commit a
335name based on any tag it finds pointing to one of the commit's
Junio C Hamano4c6aa8a2007-04-04 08:56:37336descendants:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git name-rev --tags e05db0fd<br>
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22337e05db0fd tags/v1.5.0-rc1^0~23</p></div><p>The <a href="git-describe.html" target="_top">git-describe(1)</a> command does the opposite, naming the
338revision using a tag on which the given commit is based:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git describe e05db0fd<br>
Junio C Hamano4c6aa8a2007-04-04 08:56:37339v1.5.0-rc0-260-ge05db0f</p></div><p>but that may sometimes help you guess which tags might come after the
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22340given commit.</p><p>If you just want to verify whether a given tagged version contains a
341given commit, you could use <a 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>
342e05db0fd4f31dde7005f075a84f96b360d05984b</p></div><p>The merge-base command finds a common ancestor of the given commits,
343and always returns one or the other in the case where one is a
344descendant of the other; so the above output shows that e05db0fd
345actually 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,
346because it outputs only commits that are not reachable from v1.5.0-rc1.</p><p>As yet another alternative, the <a href="git-show-branch.html" target="_top">git-show-branch(1)</a> command lists
347the commits reachable from its arguments with a display on the left-hand
348side that indicates which arguments that commit is reachable from. So,
349you 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>
350! [e05db0fd] Fix warnings in sha1_file.c - use C99 printf format if<br>
351available<br>
352 ! [v1.5.0-rc0] GIT v1.5.0 preview<br>
353  ! [v1.5.0-rc1] GIT v1.5.0-rc1<br>
354   ! [v1.5.0-rc2] GIT v1.5.0-rc2<br>
355...</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>
356available</p></div><p>Which shows that e05db0fd is reachable from itself, from v1.5.0-rc1, and
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:33357from 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
358head named "master" but not from any other head in your repository.</p><p>We can list all the heads in this repository with
359<a href="git-show-ref.html" target="_top">git-show-ref(1)</a>:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git show-ref --heads<br>
360bf62196b5e363d73353a9dcf094c59595f3153b7 refs/heads/core-tutorial<br>
361db768d5504c1bb46f63ee9d6e1772bd047e05bf9 refs/heads/maint<br>
362a07157ac624b2524a059a3414e99f6f44bebc1e7 refs/heads/master<br>
36324dbc180ea14dc1aebe09f14c8ecf32010690627 refs/heads/tutorial-2<br>
3641e87486ae06626c2f31eaa63d26fc0fd646c8af2 refs/heads/tutorial-fixes</p></div><p>We can get just the branch-head names, and remove "master", with
365the 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>
366refs/heads/core-tutorial<br>
367refs/heads/maint<br>
368refs/heads/tutorial-2<br>
369refs/heads/tutorial-fixes</p></div><p>And then we can ask to see all the commits reachable from master
370but not from these other heads:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ gitk master --not $( git show-ref --heads | cut -d' ' -f2 |<br>
371                                grep -v '^refs/heads/master' )</p></div><p>Obviously, endless variations are possible; for example, to see all
372commits reachable from some head but not from any tag in the repository:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ gitk ($ git show-ref --heads ) --not  $( git show-ref --tags )</p></div><p>(See <a href="git-rev-parse.html" target="_top">git-rev-parse(1)</a> for explanations of commit-selecting
373syntax such as <code class="literal">&#8212;not</code>.)</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a name="making-a-release"></a>Creating a changelog and tarball for a software release</h3></div></div></div><p>The <a href="git-archive.html" target="_top">git-archive(1)</a> command can create a tar or zip archive from
374any version of a project; for example:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ 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
375preceded by "prefix/".</p><p>If you're releasing a new version of a software project, you may want
376to simultaneously make a changelog to include in the release
377announcement.</p><p>Linus Torvalds, for example, makes new kernel releases by tagging them,
378then 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>
379stable="$1"<br>
380last="$2"<br>
381new="$3"<br>
382echo "# git tag v$new"<br>
383echo "git archive --prefix=linux-$new/ v$new | gzip -9 &gt; ../linux-$new.tar.gz"<br>
384echo "git diff v$stable v$new | gzip -9 &gt; ../patch-$new.gz"<br>
385echo "git log --no-merges v$new ^v$last &gt; ../ChangeLog-$new"<br>
386echo "git shortlog --no-merges v$new ^v$last &gt; ../ShortLog"<br>
387echo "git diff --stat --summary -M v$last v$new &gt; ../diffstat-$new"</p></div><p>and then he just cut-and-pastes the output commands after verifying that
Junio C Hamanoed7f4f62007-05-20 09:09:09388they look OK.</p></div></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="id274842"></a>Finding commits referencing a file with given content</h2></div></div></div><p>Somebody hands you a copy of a file, and asks which commits modified a
389file such that it contained the given content either before or after the
390commit. You can find out with this:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$  git log --raw -r --abbrev=40 --pretty=oneline -- filename |<br>
391        grep -B 1 `git hash-object filename`</p></div><p>Figuring out why this works is left as an exercise to the (advanced)
392student. The <a href="git-log.html" target="_top">git-log(1)</a>, <a href="git-diff-tree.html" target="_top">git-diff-tree(1)</a>, and
393<a href="git-hash-object.html" target="_top">git-hash-object(1)</a> man pages may prove helpful.</p></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-editing-history">Fixing a mistake by editing history</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#checkout-of-path">Checking out an old version of a file</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 00:32:53394easiest way to do so is to make sure the following lines appear in a
395file named .gitconfig in your home directory:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>[user]<br>
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22396        name = Your Name Comes Here<br>
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:53397        email = you@yourdomain.example.com</p></div><p>(See the "CONFIGURATION FILE" section of <a href="git-config.html" target="_top">git-config(1)</a> for
398details 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>
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22399$ cd project<br>
400$ 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>
401$ cd project<br>
402$ git init<br>
403$ git add . # include everything below ./ in the first commit:<br>
Junio C Hamano12a3a232007-04-07 10:18:10404$ 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 00:22:22405Making some changes to the working directory using your
406 favorite editor.
407</li><li>
408Telling git about your changes.
409</li><li>
410Creating the commit using the content you told git about
411 in step 2.
412</li></ol></div><p>In practice, you can interleave and repeat steps 1 and 2 as many
413times as you want: in order to keep track of what you want committed
414at step 3, git maintains a snapshot of the tree's contents in a
415special staging area called "the index."</p><p>At the beginning, the content of the index will be identical to
416that of the HEAD. The command "git diff &#8212;cached", which shows
417the difference between the HEAD and the index, should therefore
418produce 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&#8212;this
419is what you'd commit if you created the commit now&#8212;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
420to the index; further changes to the same file will be ignored unless
421you 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
Junio C Hamanoee1e4282007-02-04 08:32:04422commit. 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 00:22:22423and create a commit, all in one step.</p><p>A number of commands are useful for keeping track of what you're
424about to commit:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git diff --cached # difference between HEAD and the index; what<br>
425                    # would be commited if you ran "commit" now.<br>
426$ git diff          # difference between the index file and your<br>
427                    # working directory; changes that would not<br>
428                    # be included if you ran "commit" now.<br>
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:53429$ git diff HEAD     # difference between HEAD and working tree; what<br>
430                    # would be committed if you ran "commit -a" now.<br>
431$ git status        # a brief per-file summary of the above.</p></div></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 00:22:22432with a single short (less than 50 character) line summarizing the
433change, followed by a blank line and then a more thorough
434description. Tools that turn commits into email, for example, use
435the first line on the Subject line and the rest of the commit in the
Junio C Hamanoed7f4f62007-05-20 09:09:09436body.</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.
437This typically includes files generated by a build process or temporary
438backup files made by your editor. Of course, <span class="emphasis"><em>not</em></span> tracking files with git
439is just a matter of <span class="emphasis"><em>not</em></span> calling "<code class="literal">git add</code>" on them. But it quickly becomes
440annoying to have these untracked files lying around; e.g. they make
441"<code class="literal">git add .</code>" and "<code class="literal">git commit -a</code>" practically useless, and they keep
442showing up in the output of "<code class="literal">git status</code>", etc.</p><p>Git therefore provides "exclude patterns" for telling git which files to
443actively ignore. Exclude patterns are thoroughly explained in the
444"Exclude Patterns" section of the <a href="git-ls-files.html" target="_top">git-ls-files(1)</a> manual page,
445but the heart of the concept is simply a list of files which git should
446ignore. Entries in the list may contain globs to specify multiple files,
447or may be prefixed by "<code class="literal">!</code>" to explicitly include (un-ignore) a previously
448excluded (ignored) file (i.e. later exclude patterns override earlier ones).
449The following example should illustrate such patterns:</p><div class="literallayout"><p># Lines starting with '#' are considered comments.<br>
450# Ignore foo.txt.<br>
451foo.txt<br>
452# Ignore (generated) html files,<br>
453*.html<br>
454# except foo.html which is maintained by hand.<br>
455!foo.html<br>
456# Ignore objects and archives.<br>
457*.[oa]</p></div><p>The next question is where to put these exclude patterns so that git can
458find them. Git looks for exclude patterns in the following files:</p><div class="variablelist"><dl><dt><span class="term">
459<code class="literal">.gitignore</code> files in your working tree:
460</span></dt><dd>
461 You may store multiple <code class="literal">.gitignore</code> files at various locations in your
462 working tree. Each <code class="literal">.gitignore</code> file is applied to the directory where
463 it's located, including its subdirectories. Furthermore, the
464 <code class="literal">.gitignore</code> files can be tracked like any other files in your working
465 tree; just do a "<code class="literal">git add .gitignore</code>" and commit. <code class="literal">.gitignore</code> is
466 therefore the right place to put exclude patterns that are meant to
467 be shared between all project participants, such as build output files
468 (e.g. <code class="literal">*.o</code>), etc.
469</dd><dt><span class="term">
470<code class="literal">.git/info/exclude</code> in your repo:
471</span></dt><dd>
472 Exclude patterns in this file are applied to the working tree as a
473 whole. Since the file is not located in your working tree, it does
474 not follow push/pull/clone like <code class="literal">.gitignore</code> can do. This is therefore
475 the place to put exclude patterns that are local to your copy of the
476 repo (i.e. <span class="emphasis"><em>not</em></span> shared between project participants), such as
477 temporary backup files made by your editor (e.g. <code class="literal">*~</code>), etc.
478</dd><dt><span class="term">
479The file specified by the <code class="literal">core.excludesfile</code> config directive:
480</span></dt><dd>
481 By setting the <code class="literal">core.excludesfile</code> config directive you can tell git
482 where to find more exclude patterns (see <a href="git-config.html" target="_top">git-config(1)</a> for
483 more information on configuration options). This config directive
484 can be set in the per-repo <code class="literal">.git/config</code> file, in which case the
485 exclude patterns will apply to that repo only. Alternatively, you
486 can set the directive in the global <code class="literal">~/.gitconfig</code> file to apply
487 the exclude pattern to all your git repos. As with the above
488 <code class="literal">.git/info/exclude</code> (and, indeed, with git config directives in
489 general), this directive does not follow push/pull/clone, but remain
490 local to your repo(s).
491</dd></dl></div><div class="note" style="margin-left: 0.5in; margin-right: 0.5in;"><h3 class="title">Note</h3><p>In addition to the above alternatives, there are git commands that can take
492exclude patterns directly on the command line. See <a href="git-ls-files.html" target="_top">git-ls-files(1)</a>
493for an example of this.</p></div></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
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22494<a 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
495branch. If there are conflicts&#8212;for example, if the same file is
496modified in two different ways in the remote branch and the local
Junio C Hamanoc51fede2007-03-12 07:29:20497branch&#8212;then you are warned; the output may look something like this:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git merge next<br>
498 100% (4/4) done<br>
499Auto-merged file.txt<br>
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22500CONFLICT (content): Merge conflict in file.txt<br>
501Automatic merge failed; fix conflicts and then commit the result.</p></div><p>Conflict markers are left in the problematic files, and after
502you resolve the conflicts manually, you can update the index
503with the contents and run git commit, as you normally would when
504creating a new file.</p><p>If you examine the resulting commit using gitk, you will see that it
505has two parents, one pointing to the top of the current branch, and
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:53506one 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 00:22:22507the working tree in a special state that gives you all the
508information you need to help resolve the merge.</p><p>Files with conflicts are marked specially in the index, so until you
Junio C Hamanoaa83a7d2007-03-05 02:37:29509resolve the problem and update the index, <a href="git-commit.html" target="_top">git-commit(1)</a> will
510fail:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git commit<br>
511file.txt: needs merge</p></div><p>Also, <a href="git-status.html" target="_top">git-status(1)</a> will list those files as "unmerged", and the
512files 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>
513Hello world<br>
514=======<br>
515Goodbye<br>
516&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>
517$ git commit</p></div><p>Note that the commit message will already be filled in for you with
518some information about the merge. Normally you can just use this
519default message unchanged, but you may add additional commentary of
520your 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 00:32:53521also 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 Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22522already added to the index file, so <a href="git-diff.html" target="_top">git-diff(1)</a> shows only
Junio C Hamanoaa83a7d2007-03-05 02:37:29523the conflicts. It uses an unusual syntax:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git diff<br>
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22524diff --cc file.txt<br>
525index 802992c,2b60207..0000000<br>
526--- a/file.txt<br>
527+++ b/file.txt<br>
528@@@ -1,1 -1,1 +1,5 @@@<br>
529++&lt;&lt;&lt;&lt;&lt;&lt;&lt; HEAD:file.txt<br>
530 +Hello world<br>
531++=======<br>
532+ Goodbye<br>
533++&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; 77976da35a11db4580b80ae27e8d65caf5208086:file.txt</p></div><p>Recall that the commit which will be commited after we resolve this
534conflict will have two parents instead of the usual one: one parent
535will be HEAD, the tip of the current branch; the other will be the
Junio C Hamanoaa83a7d2007-03-05 02:37:29536tip 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
537these 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>
538$ git show :2:file.txt  # the version from HEAD, but including any<br>
539                        # nonconflicting changes from MERGE_HEAD<br>
540$ git show :3:file.txt  # the version from MERGE_HEAD, but including any<br>
541                        # nonconflicting changes from HEAD.</p></div><p>Since the stage 2 and stage 3 versions have already been updated with
542nonconflicting changes, the only remaining differences between them are
543the important ones; thus <a href="git-diff.html" target="_top">git-diff(1)</a> can use the information in
544the index to show only those conflicts.</p><p>The diff above shows the differences between the working-tree version of
545file.txt and the stage 2 and stage 3 versions. So instead of preceding
546each line by a single "+" or "-", it now uses two columns: the first
547column is used for differences between the first parent and the working
548directory copy, and the second for differences between the second parent
549and the working directory copy. (See the "COMBINED DIFF FORMAT" section
550of <a 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
551index), the diff will look like:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git diff<br>
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22552diff --cc file.txt<br>
553index 802992c,2b60207..0000000<br>
554--- a/file.txt<br>
555+++ b/file.txt<br>
556@@@ -1,1 -1,1 +1,1 @@@<br>
557- Hello world<br>
558 -Goodbye<br>
559++Goodbye world</p></div><p>This shows that our resolved version deleted "Hello world" from the
560first parent, deleted "Goodbye" from the second parent, and added
Junio C Hamanoaa83a7d2007-03-05 02:37:29561"Goodbye world", which was previously absent from both.</p><p>Some special diff options allow diffing the working directory against
562any of these stages:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git diff -1 file.txt          # diff against stage 1<br>
563$ git diff --base file.txt      # same as the above<br>
564$ git diff -2 file.txt          # diff against stage 2<br>
565$ git diff --ours file.txt      # same as the above<br>
566$ git diff -3 file.txt          # diff against stage 3<br>
567$ git diff --theirs file.txt    # same as the above.</p></div><p>The <a href="git-log.html" target="_top">git-log(1)</a> and gitk[1] commands also provide special help
568for merges:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git log --merge<br>
569$ gitk --merge</p></div><p>These will display all commits which exist only on HEAD or on
Junio C Hamanoec47dcf2007-05-16 22:46:31570MERGE_HEAD, and which touch an unmerged file.</p><p>You may also use <a href="git-mergetool.html" target="_top">git-mergetool(1)</a>, which lets you merge the
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:53571unmerged 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 10:18:10572git-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 Hamanoaa83a7d2007-03-05 02:37:29573away, 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 commited 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&#8212;never
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22574throw away a commit you have already committed if that commit may
575itself have been merged into another branch, as doing so may confuse
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:53576further 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 00:22:22577differently. Normally, a merge results in a merge commit, with two
578parents, one pointing at each of the two lines of development that
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:53579were merged.</p><p>However, if the current branch is a descendant of the other&#8212;so every
580commit present in the one is already contained in the other&#8212;then git
581just performs a "fast forward"; the head of the current branch is moved
582forward to point at the head of the merged-in branch, without any new
583commits 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 00:22:22584mistake, you can return the entire working tree to the last committed
585state 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
586fundamentally different ways to fix the problem:</p><div class="orderedlist"><ol type="1"><li>
587You can create a new commit that undoes whatever was done
588 by the previous commit. This is the correct thing if your
589 mistake has already been made public.
590</li><li>
591You can go back and modify the old commit. You should
592 never do this if you have already made the history public;
593 git does not normally expect the "history" of a project to
594 change, and cannot correctly perform repeated merges from
595 a branch that has had its history changed.
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:53596</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 Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22597just pass the <a href="git-revert.html" target="_top">git-revert(1)</a> command a reference to the bad
598commit; 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
599will 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
600intact any changes made since then. If more recent changes overlap
601with the changes to be reverted, then you will be asked to fix
Junio C Hamanoaa83a7d2007-03-05 02:37:29602conflicts manually, just as in the case of <a 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-editing-history"></a>Fixing a mistake by editing history</h3></div></div></div><p>If the problematic commit is the most recent commit, and you have not
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22603yet made that commit public, then you may just
Junio C Hamano12a3a232007-04-07 10:18:10604<a href="#undoing-a-merge" title="Undoing a merge">destroy it using git-reset</a>.</p><p>Alternatively, you
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22605can edit the working directory and update the index to fix your
Junio C Hamano12a3a232007-04-07 10:18:10606mistake, just as if you were going to <a 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 00:22:22607changes, 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
608been merged into another branch; use <a href="git-revert.html" target="_top">git-revert(1)</a> instead in
609that case.</p><p>It is also possible to edit commits further back in the history, but
610this is an advanced topic to be left for
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:33611<a 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 00:22:22612useful to check out an older version of a particular file using
613<a href="git-checkout.html" target="_top">git-checkout(1)</a>. We've used git checkout before to switch
614branches, but it has quite different behavior if it is given a path
615name: 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
616also 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
617modifying the working directory, you can do that with
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:53618<a 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><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 Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22619information from taking up to much space on disk or in memory.</p><p>This compression is not performed automatically. Therefore you
620should occasionally run <a 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
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:53621you 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 href="git-fsck.html" target="_top">git-fsck(1)</a> command runs a number of self-consistency checks
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22622on the repository, and reports on any problems. This may take some
623time. The most common warning by far is about "dangling" objects:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git fsck<br>
624dangling commit 7281251ddd2a61e38657c827739c57015671a6b3<br>
625dangling commit 2706a059f258c6b245f298dc4ff2ccd30ec21a63<br>
626dangling commit 13472b7c4b80851a1bc551779171dcb03655e9b5<br>
627dangling blob 218761f9d90712d37a9c5e36f406f92202db07eb<br>
628dangling commit bf093535a34a4d35731aa2bd90fe6b176302f14f<br>
629dangling commit 8e4bec7f2ddaa268bef999853c25755452100f8e<br>
630dangling tree d50bb86186bf27b681d25af89d3b5b68382e4085<br>
631dangling tree b24c2473f1fd3d91352a624795be026d64c8841f<br>
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:53632...</p></div><p>Dangling objects are not a problem. At worst they may take up a little
633extra disk space. They can sometimes provide a last-resort method of
634recovery lost work&#8212;see <a href="#dangling-objects" title="Dangling objects">the section called &#8220;Dangling objects&#8221;</a> for details. However, if
635you want, you may remove them with <a href="git-prune.html" target="_top">git-prune(1)</a> or the &#8212;prune
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22636option to <a href="git-gc.html" target="_top">git-gc(1)</a>:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git gc --prune</p></div><p>This may be time-consuming. Unlike most other git operations (including
637git-gc when run without any options), it is not safe to prune while
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:53638other git operations are in progress in the same repository.</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 <a href="git-reset.html" target="_top">git-reset(1)</a> &#8212;hard, and then
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22639realize that the branch was the only reference you had to that point in
640history.</p><p>Fortunately, git also keeps a log, called a "reflog", of all the
641previous values of each branch. So in this case you can still find the
642old 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 head.
643This syntax can be used to with any git command that accepts a commit,
644not just with git log. Some other examples:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git show master@{2}           # See where the branch pointed 2,<br>
645$ git show master@{3}           # 3, ... changes ago.<br>
646$ gitk master@{yesterday}       # See where it pointed yesterday,<br>
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:53647$ gitk master@{"1 week ago"}    # ... or last week<br>
648$ 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
649pointed to one week ago. This allows you to see the history of what
650you've checked out.</p><p>The reflogs are kept by default for 30 days, after which they may be
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22651pruned. See <a href="git-reflog.html" target="_top">git-reflog(1)</a> and <a href="git-gc.html" target="_top">git-gc(1)</a> to learn
652how to control this pruning, and see the "SPECIFYING REVISIONS"
653section of <a 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.
654While normal history is shared by every repository that works on the
655same project, the reflog history is not shared: it tells you only about
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:53656how 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,
657suppose you delete a branch, then realize you need the history it
658contained. The reflog is also deleted; however, if you have not yet
659pruned the repository, then you may still be able to find the lost
660commits in the dangling objects that git-fsck reports. See
661<a href="#dangling-objects" title="Dangling objects">the section called &#8220;Dangling objects&#8221;</a> for the details.</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git fsck<br>
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22662dangling commit 7281251ddd2a61e38657c827739c57015671a6b3<br>
663dangling commit 2706a059f258c6b245f298dc4ff2ccd30ec21a63<br>
664dangling commit 13472b7c4b80851a1bc551779171dcb03655e9b5<br>
Junio C Hamano39381a72007-02-02 07:35:15665...</p></div><p>You can examine
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22666one 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
667history that is described by the dangling commit(s), but not the
668history that is described by all your existing branches and tags. Thus
669you get exactly the history reachable from that commit that is lost.
670(And notice that it might not be just one commit: we only report the
671"tip of the line" as being dangling, but there might be a whole deep
Junio C Hamanodb911ee2007-02-28 08:13:52672and complex commit history that was dropped.)</p><p>If you decide you want the history back, you can always create a new
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:53673reference 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 Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:33674dangling 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="#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 00:22:22675may wish to check the original repository for updates and merge them
676into your own work.</p><p>We have already seen <a 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 href="git-fetch.html" target="_top">git-fetch(1)</a>,
677and how to merge two branches. So you can merge in changes from the
678original repository's master branch with:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git fetch<br>
679$ git merge origin/master</p></div><p>However, the <a href="git-pull.html" target="_top">git-pull(1)</a> command provides a way to do this in
680one step:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git pull origin master</p></div><p>In fact, "origin" is normally the default repository to pull from,
681and the default branch is normally the HEAD of the remote repository,
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:53682so often you can accomplish the above with just</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git pull</p></div><p>See the descriptions of the branch.&lt;name&gt;.remote and branch.&lt;name&gt;.merge
683options in <a href="git-config.html" target="_top">git-config(1)</a> to learn how to control these defaults
684depending on the current branch. Also note that the &#8212;track option to
685<a href="git-branch.html" target="_top">git-branch(1)</a> and <a href="git-checkout.html" target="_top">git-checkout(1)</a> can be used to
686automatically set the default remote branch to pull from at the time
687that a branch is created:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git checkout --track -b origin/maint maint</p></div><p>In addition to saving you keystrokes, "git pull" also helps you by
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22688producing a default commit message documenting the branch and
689repository that you pulled from.</p><p>(But note that no such commit will be created in the case of a
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:53690<a href="#fast-forwards" title="Fast-forward merges">fast forward</a>; instead, your branch will just be
Junio C Hamanodb911ee2007-02-28 08:13:52691updated 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 00:22:22692in which case it just merges in a branch from the current repository; so
693the commands</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git pull . branch<br>
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:53694$ 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 Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22695just be to send them as patches in email:</p><p>First, use <a 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
696for 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
697hand. However, if you have a lot to send at once, you may prefer to
698use the <a href="git-send-email.html" target="_top">git-send-email(1)</a> script to automate the process.
699Consult the mailing list for your project first to determine how they
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:53700prefer 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 href="git-am.html" target="_top">git-am(1)</a> (am stands for
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22701"apply mailbox"), for importing such an emailed series of patches.
702Just save all of the patch-containing messages, in order, into a
703single 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
704will stop, and you can fix the conflicts as described in
705"<a href="#resolving-a-merge" title="Resolving a merge">Resolving a merge</a>". (The "-3" option tells
706git to perform a merge; if you would prefer it just to abort and
707leave your tree and index untouched, you may omit that option.)</p><p>Once the index is updated with the results of the conflict
708resolution, 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
709remaining patches from the mailbox.</p><p>The final result will be a series of commits, one for each patch in
710the original mailbox, with authorship and commit log message each
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:33711taken 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 of
712that project to pull the changes from your repository using git-pull[1].
713In the section "<a 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 updates from the "main"
714repository, but it works just as well in the other direction.</p><p>If you and the maintainer both have accounts on the same machine, then
715you can just pull changes from each other's repositories directly;
716commands that accepts repository URLs as arguments will also accept a
717local directory name:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git clone /path/to/repository<br>
718$ git pull /path/to/other/repository</p></div><p>However, the more common way to do this is to maintain a separate public
719repository (usually on a different host) for others to pull changes
720from. This is usually more convenient, and allows you to cleanly
721separate 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 00:22:22722repository, but periodically "push" changes from your personal
723repository into your public repository, allowing other developers to
724pull from that repository. So the flow of changes, in a situation
725where there is one other developer with a public repository, looks
726like this:</p><pre class="literallayout"> you push
727your personal repo ------------------&gt; your public repo
728 ^ |
729 | |
730 | you pull | they pull
731 | |
732 | |
733 | they push V
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:33734their public repo &lt;------------------- their repo</pre><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
735first create a new clone of the repository and tell git-daemon that it
736is meant to be public:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git clone --bare ~/proj proj.git<br>
737$ touch proj.git/git-daemon-export-ok</p></div><p>The resulting directory proj.git contains a "bare" git repository&#8212;it is
738just the contents of the ".git" directory, without any files checked out
739around it.</p><p>Next, copy proj.git to the server where you plan to host the
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22740public repository. You can use scp, rsync, or whatever is most
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:33741convenient.</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
742directory to put the repository in, and what git:// url it will appear
743at. You can then skip to the section
744"<a 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 href="git-daemon.html" target="_top">git-daemon(1)</a>; it will
745listen on port 9418. By default, it will allow access to any directory
746that looks like a git directory and contains the magic file
747git-daemon-export-ok. Passing some directory paths as git-daemon
748arguments will further restrict the exports to those paths.</p><p>You can also run git-daemon as an inetd service; see the
749<a href="git-daemon.html" target="_top">git-daemon(1)</a> man page for details. (See especially the
750examples 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 00:22:22751host 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
752a directory that is exported by the web server, and make some
753adjustments to give web clients some extra information they need:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ mv proj.git /home/you/public_html/proj.git<br>
754$ cd proj.git<br>
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:53755$ git --bare update-server-info<br>
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22756$ chmod a+x hooks/post-update</p></div><p>(For an explanation of the last two lines, see
757<a href="git-update-server-info.html" target="_top">git-update-server-info(1)</a>, and the documentation
Junio C Hamano323e52d2007-05-13 22:19:53758<a href="hooks.html" target="_top">Hooks used by git</a>.)</p><p>Advertise the url of proj.git. Anybody else should then be able to
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22759clone or pull from that url, for example with a commandline like:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git clone http://yourserver.com/~you/proj.git</p></div><p>(See also
760<a href="howto/setup-git-server-over-http.txt" target="_top">setup-git-server-over-http</a>
761for a slightly more sophisticated setup using WebDAV which also
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:33762allows 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 Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22763<a href="#exporting-via-http" title="Exporting a git repository via http">http</a> or <a href="#exporting-via-git" title="Exporting a git repository via the git protocol">git</a>) allow other
764maintainers to fetch your latest changes, but they do not allow write
765access, which you will need to update the public repository with the
766latest changes created in your private repository.</p><p>The simplest way to do this is using <a href="git-push.html" target="_top">git-push(1)</a> and ssh; to
767update the remote branch named "master" with the latest state of your
768branch 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
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:53769a <a href="#fast-forwards" title="Fast-forward merges">fast forward</a>. Normally this is a sign of
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22770something wrong. However, if you are sure you know what you're
771doing, you may force git-push to perform the update anyway by
772proceeding the branch name by a plus sign:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git push ssh://yourserver.com/~you/proj.git +master</p></div><p>As with git-fetch, you may also set up configuration options to
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:53773save typing; so, for example, after</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ cat &gt;&gt;.git/config &lt;&lt;EOF<br>
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22774[remote "public-repo"]<br>
775        url = ssh://yourserver.com/~you/proj.git<br>
776EOF</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,
777and remote.&lt;name&gt;.push options in <a href="git-config.html" target="_top">git-config(1)</a> for
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:33778details.</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 00:22:22779commonly used in CVS, where several developers with special rights
780all push to and pull from a single shared repository. See
Junio C Hamano323e52d2007-05-13 22:19:53781<a href="cvs-migration.html" target="_top">git for CVS users</a> for instructions on how to
Junio C Hamanoed7f4f62007-05-20 09:09:09782set this up.</p><p>However, while there is nothing wrong with git's support for shared
783repositories, this mode of operation is not generally recommended,
784simply because the mode of collaboration that git supports&#8212;by
785exchanging patches and pulling from public repositories&#8212;has so many
786advantages over the central shared repository:</p><div class="itemizedlist"><ul type="disc"><li>
787Git's ability to quickly import and merge patches allows a
788 single maintainer to process incoming changes even at very
789 high rates. And when that becomes too much, git-pull provides
790 an easy way for that maintainer to delegate this job to other
791 maintainers while still allowing optional review of incoming
792 changes.
793</li><li>
794Since every developer's repository has the same complete copy
795 of the project history, no repository is special, and it is
796 trivial for another developer to take over maintenance of a
797 project, either by mutual agreement, or because a maintainer
798 becomes unresponsive or difficult to work with.
799</li><li>
800The lack of a central group of "committers" means there is
801 less need for formal decisions about who is "in" and who is
802 "out".
803</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 00:22:22804project's files and history without having to install git; see the file
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:33805gitweb/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
806IA64 architecture for the Linux kernel.</p><p>He uses two public branches:</p><div class="itemizedlist"><ul type="disc"><li>
807A "test" tree into which patches are initially placed so that they
808 can get some exposure when integrated with other ongoing development.
809 This tree is available to Andrew for pulling into -mm whenever he
810 wants.
811</li><li>
812A "release" tree into which tested patches are moved for final sanity
813 checking, and as a vehicle to send them upstream to Linus (by sending
814 him a "please pull" request.)
815</li></ul></div><p>He also uses a set of temporary branches ("topic branches"), each
816containing a logical grouping of patches.</p><p>To set this up, first create your work tree by cloning Linus's public
817tree:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git work<br>
818$ cd work</p></div><p>Linus's tree will be stored in the remote branch named origin/master,
819and can be updated using <a href="git-fetch.html" target="_top">git-fetch(1)</a>; you can track other
820public trees using <a href="git-remote.html" target="_top">git-remote(1)</a> to set up a "remote" and
821git-fetch[1] to keep them up-to-date; see <a 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
822at the current tip of origin/master branch, and should be set up (using
823the &#8212;track option to <a href="git-branch.html" target="_top">git-branch(1)</a>) to merge changes in from
824Linus by default.</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git branch --track test origin/master<br>
825$ git branch --track release origin/master</p></div><p>These can be easily kept up to date using <a href="git-pull.html" target="_top">git-pull(1)</a></p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git checkout test &amp;&amp; git pull<br>
826$ git checkout release &amp;&amp; git pull</p></div><p>Important note! If you have any local changes in these branches, then
827this merge will create a commit object in the history (with no local
828changes git will simply do a "Fast forward" merge). Many people dislike
829the "noise" that this creates in the Linux history, so you should avoid
830doing this capriciously in the "release" branch, as these noisy commits
831will become part of the permanent history when you ask Linus to pull
832from the release branch.</p><p>A few configuration variables (see <a href="git-config.html" target="_top">git-config(1)</a>) can
833make it easy to push both branches to your public tree. (See
834<a href="#setting-up-a-public-repository" title="Setting up a public repository">the section called &#8220;Setting up a public repository&#8221;</a>.)</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ cat &gt;&gt; .git/config &lt;&lt;EOF<br>
835[remote "mytree"]<br>
836        url =  master.kernel.org:/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/aegl/linux-2.6.git<br>
837        push = release<br>
838        push = test<br>
839EOF</p></div><p>Then you can push both the test and release trees using
840<a 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
841snappy name for a branch to hold this patch (or related group of
842patches), and create a new branch from the current tip of Linus's
843branch:</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
844the patch is a multi-part series, then you should apply each as a separate
845commit 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
846"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 &#8230; but you might if you
847spent 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
848same branch into the "release" tree ready to go upstream. This is where you
849see the value of keeping each patch (or patch series) in its own branch. It
850means 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
851well chosen names you picked for each of them, you may forget what
852they are for, or what status they are in. To get a reminder of what
853changes 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
854use:</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.
855If it has been merged, then there will be no output.)</p><p>Once a patch completes the great cycle (moving from test to release,
856then pulled by Linus, and finally coming back into your local
857"origin/master" branch) the branch for this change is no longer needed.
858You 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
859branch and then merge into each of the test and release branches. For
860these changes, just apply directly to the "release" branch, and then
861merge that into the "test" branch.</p><p>To create diffstat and shortlog summaries of changes to include in a "please
862pull" 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>
863# Update a branch in my GIT tree.  If the branch to be updated<br>
864# is origin, then pull from kernel.org.  Otherwise merge<br>
865# origin/master branch into test|release branch<br>
866<br>
867case "$1" in<br>
868test|release)<br>
869        git checkout $1 &amp;&amp; git pull . origin<br>
870        ;;<br>
871origin)<br>
872        before=$(cat .git/refs/remotes/origin/master)<br>
873        git fetch origin<br>
874        after=$(cat .git/refs/remotes/origin/master)<br>
875        if [ $before != $after ]<br>
876        then<br>
877                git log $before..$after | git shortlog<br>
878        fi<br>
879        ;;<br>
880*)<br>
881        echo "Usage: $0 origin|test|release" 1&gt;&amp;2<br>
882        exit 1<br>
883        ;;<br>
884esac</p></div><div class="literallayout"><p>==== merge script ====<br>
885# Merge a branch into either the test or release branch<br>
886<br>
887pname=$0<br>
888<br>
889usage()<br>
890{<br>
891        echo "Usage: $pname branch test|release" 1&gt;&amp;2<br>
892        exit 1<br>
893}<br>
894<br>
895if [ ! -f .git/refs/heads/"$1" ]<br>
896then<br>
897        echo "Can't see branch &lt;$1&gt;" 1&gt;&amp;2<br>
898        usage<br>
899fi<br>
900<br>
901case "$2" in<br>
902test|release)<br>
903        if [ $(git log $2..$1 | wc -c) -eq 0 ]<br>
904        then<br>
905                echo $1 already merged into $2 1&gt;&amp;2<br>
906                exit 1<br>
907        fi<br>
908        git checkout $2 &amp;&amp; git pull . $1<br>
909        ;;<br>
910*)<br>
911        usage<br>
912        ;;<br>
913esac</p></div><div class="literallayout"><p>==== status script ====<br>
914# report on status of my ia64 GIT tree<br>
915<br>
916gb=$(tput setab 2)<br>
917rb=$(tput setab 1)<br>
918restore=$(tput setab 9)<br>
919<br>
920if [ `git rev-list test..release | wc -c` -gt 0 ]<br>
921then<br>
922        echo $rb Warning: commits in release that are not in test $restore<br>
923        git log test..release<br>
924fi<br>
925<br>
926for branch in `ls .git/refs/heads`<br>
927do<br>
928        if [ $branch = test -o $branch = release ]<br>
929        then<br>
930                continue<br>
931        fi<br>
932<br>
933        echo -n $gb ======= $branch ====== $restore " "<br>
934        status=<br>
935        for ref in test release origin/master<br>
936        do<br>
937                if [ `git rev-list $ref..$branch | wc -c` -gt 0 ]<br>
938                then<br>
939                        status=$status${ref:0:1}<br>
940                fi<br>
941        done<br>
942        case $status in<br>
943        trl)<br>
944                echo $rb Need to pull into test $restore<br>
945                ;;<br>
946        rl)<br>
947                echo "In test"<br>
948                ;;<br>
949        l)<br>
950                echo "Waiting for linus"<br>
951                ;;<br>
952        "")<br>
953                echo $rb All done $restore<br>
954                ;;<br>
955        *)<br>
956                echo $rb "&lt;$status&gt;" $restore<br>
957                ;;<br>
958        esac<br>
959        git log origin/master..$branch | git shortlog<br>
960done</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="#modifying-one-commit">Modifying 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></dl></div><p>Normally commits are only added to a project, never taken away or
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22961replaced. Git is designed with this assumption, and violating it will
962cause 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 00:32:53963assumption.</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 00:22:22964complicated feature, and to present it to the other developers in a way
965that makes it easy for them to read your changes, verify that they are
966correct, 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 08:13:52967may 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 00:22:22968mistakes, 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>
969Each patch can be applied in order.
970</li><li>
971Each patch includes a single logical change, together with a
972 message explaining the change.
973</li><li>
974No patch introduces a regression: after applying any initial
975 part of the series, the resulting project still compiles and
976 works, and has no bugs that it didn't have before.
977</li><li>
978The complete series produces the same end result as your own
979 (probably much messier!) development process did.
980</li></ol></div><p>We will introduce some tools that can help you do this, explain how to
981use them, and then explain some of the problems that can arise because
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:53982you 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 Hamanodb911ee2007-02-28 08:13:52983"origin", and create some commits on top of it:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git checkout -b mywork origin<br>
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:22984$ vi file.txt<br>
985$ git commit<br>
986$ vi otherfile.txt<br>
987$ git commit<br>
988...</p></div><p>You have performed no merges into mywork, so it is just a simple linear
Junio C Hamanoc51fede2007-03-12 07:29:20989sequence of patches on top of "origin":</p><pre class="literallayout"> o--o--o &lt;-- origin
990 \
991 o--o--o &lt;-- mywork</pre><p>Some more interesting work has been done in the upstream project, and
992"origin" has advanced:</p><pre class="literallayout"> o--o--O--o--o--o &lt;-- origin
993 \
994 a--b--c &lt;-- mywork</pre><p>At this point, you could use "pull" to merge your changes back in;
995the result would create a new merge commit, like this:</p><pre class="literallayout"> o--o--O--o--o--o &lt;-- origin
996 \ \
997 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 00:22:22998commits without any merges, you may instead choose to use
999<a href="git-rebase.html" target="_top">git-rebase(1)</a>:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git checkout mywork<br>
1000$ git rebase origin</p></div><p>This will remove each of your commits from mywork, temporarily saving
1001them as patches (in a directory named ".dotest"), update mywork to
1002point at the latest version of origin, then apply each of the saved
Junio C Hamanoc51fede2007-03-12 07:29:201003patches to the new mywork. The result will look like:</p><pre class="literallayout"> o--o--O--o--o--o &lt;-- origin
1004 \
1005 a'--b'--c' &lt;-- mywork</pre><p>In the process, it may discover conflicts. In that case it will stop
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221006and allow you to fix the conflicts; after fixing conflicts, use "git
1007add" to update the index with those contents, and then, instead of
1008running 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 &#8212;abort option to abort this process and
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:531009return 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="modifying-one-commit"></a>Modifying a single commit</h2></div></div></div><p>We saw in <a href="#fixing-a-mistake-by-editing-history" title="Fixing a mistake by editing history">the section called &#8220;Fixing a mistake by editing history&#8221;</a> that you can replace the
Junio C Hamanoaa83a7d2007-03-05 02:37:291010most 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
1011changes, giving you a chance to edit the old commit message first.</p><p>You can also use a combination of this and <a href="git-rebase.html" target="_top">git-rebase(1)</a> to edit
Junio C Hamano0e3cb532007-04-17 08:28:111012commits further back in your history. First, tag the problematic commit with</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
1013on top of it (note that we could check out the commit on a temporary
1014branch, but instead we're using a <a 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 Hamanoaa83a7d2007-03-05 02:37:291015$ # make changes here and update the index<br>
1016$ git commit --amend<br>
Junio C Hamano0e3cb532007-04-17 08:28:111017$ git rebase --onto HEAD bad mywork</p></div><p>When you're done, you'll be left with mywork checked out, with the top
1018patches on mywork reapplied on top of your modified commit. You can
1019then 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 02:37:291020"modified" existing commits; instead, you have replaced the old commits with
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:531021new 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 href="git-cherry-pick.html" target="_top">git-cherry-pick(1)</a> command
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221022allows you to apply the change introduced by that commit and create a
1023new commit that records it. So, for example, if "mywork" points to a
1024series of patches on top of "origin", you might do something like:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git checkout -b mywork-new origin<br>
1025$ gitk origin..mywork &amp;</p></div><p>And browse through the list of patches in the mywork branch using gitk,
1026applying them (possibly in a different order) to mywork-new using
1027cherry-pick, and possibly modifying them as you go using commit
1028&#8212;amend.</p><p>Another technique is to use git-format-patch to create a series of
1029patches, then reset the state to before the patches:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git format-patch origin<br>
1030$ git reset --hard origin</p></div><p>Then modify, reorder, or eliminate patches as preferred before applying
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:531031them again with <a 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 08:13:521032purpose of maintaining a patch series. These are outside of the scope of
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:531033this 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 00:22:221034with merging. Suppose somebody fetches your branch and merges it into
Junio C Hamanoc51fede2007-03-12 07:29:201035their branch, with a result something like this:</p><pre class="literallayout"> o--o--O--o--o--o &lt;-- origin
1036 \ \
1037 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
1038 /
1039 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
1040look like:</p><pre class="literallayout"> o--o--o &lt;-- new head of origin
1041 /
1042 o--o--O--o--o--o &lt;-- old head of origin
1043 \ \
1044 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 00:22:221045the old head; it treats this situation exactly the same as it would if
1046two developers had independently done the work on the old and new heads
1047in parallel. At this point, if someone attempts to merge the new head
1048in to their branch, git will attempt to merge together the two (old and
1049new) lines of development, instead of trying to replace the old by the
1050new. The results are likely to be unexpected.</p><p>You may still choose to publish branches whose history is rewritten,
1051and it may be useful for others to be able to fetch those branches in
1052order to examine or test them, but they should not attempt to pull such
1053branches into their own work.</p><p>For true distributed development that supports proper merging,
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331054published branches should never be rewritten.</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 href="git-remote.html" target="_top">git-remote(1)</a>, you can also choose just
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221055to update one branch at a time, and to store it locally under an
1056arbitrary 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
1057repository you originally cloned from. The second argument tells git
1058to fetch the branch named "todo" from the remote repository, and to
1059store 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
1060branch named "master" from the repository at the given URL. If you
1061already have a branch named example-master, it will attempt to
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:531062<a href="#fast-forwards" title="Fast-forward merges">fast-forward</a> to the commit given by example.com's
1063master 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
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221064fetch" checks to make sure that the most recent commit on the remote
1065branch is a descendant of the most recent commit on your copy of the
1066branch before updating your copy of the branch to point at the new
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:531067commit. Git calls this process a <a 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 07:29:201068 \
1069 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 00:22:221070a descendant of the old head. For example, the developer may have
1071realized she made a serious mistake, and decided to backtrack,
Junio C Hamanoc51fede2007-03-12 07:29:201072resulting in a situation like:</p><pre class="literallayout"> o--o--o--o--a--b &lt;-- old head of the branch
1073 \
1074 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 00:22:221075described in the following section. However, note that in the
1076situation above this may mean losing the commits labeled "a" and "b",
1077unless you've already created a reference of your own pointing to
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:531078them.</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
1079descendant 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"
1080flag 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
1081may 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 08:13:521082repository that you originally cloned from. This information is
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221083stored in git configuration variables, which you can see using
1084<a href="git-config.html" target="_top">git-config(1)</a>:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git config -l<br>
1085core.repositoryformatversion=0<br>
1086core.filemode=true<br>
1087core.logallrefupdates=true<br>
1088remote.origin.url=git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/git/git.git<br>
1089remote.origin.fetch=+refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*<br>
1090branch.master.remote=origin<br>
1091branch.master.merge=refs/heads/master</p></div><p>If there are other repositories that you also use frequently, you can
1092create similar configuration options to save typing; for example,
1093after</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>
Junio C Hamano91d44c52007-05-09 07:16:071094$ 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>
1095$ git fetch example master:refs/remotes/example/master<br>
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221096$ 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
1097throwing away commits on mybranch.</p><p>Also note that all of the above configuration can be performed by
1098directly editing the file .git/config instead of using
1099<a href="git-config.html" target="_top">git-config(1)</a>.</p><p>See <a href="git-config.html" target="_top">git-config(1)</a> for more details on the configuration
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331100options mentioned above.</p></div></div><div class="chapter" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title"><a name="git-internals"></a>Chapter 7. Git internals</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><dt><span class="section"><a href="#blob-object">Blob Object</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#tree-object">Tree Object</a></span></dt><dt><span class="section"><a href="#commit-object">Commit 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="#the-index">The "index" aka "Current Directory Cache"</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><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="#birdview-on-the-source-code">A birds-eye view of Git's source code</a></span></dt></dl></div><p>Git depends on two fundamental abstractions: the "object database", and
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:531101the "current directory cache" aka "index".</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>The object database is literally just a content-addressable collection
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221102of objects. All objects are named by their content, which is
1103approximated by the SHA1 hash of the object itself. Objects may refer
1104to other objects (by referencing their SHA1 hash), and so you can
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:531105build up a hierarchy of objects.</p><p>All objects have a statically determined "type" which is
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221106determined at object creation time, and which identifies the format of
1107the object (i.e. how it is used, and how it can refer to other
1108objects). There are currently four different object types: "blob",
Junio C Hamano0e3cb532007-04-17 08:28:111109"tree", "commit", and "tag".</p><p>A <a href="#def_blob_object">"blob" object</a> cannot refer to any other object,
1110and is, as the name implies, a pure storage object containing some
1111user data. It is used to actually store the file data, i.e. a blob
1112object is associated with some particular version of some file.</p><p>A <a href="#def_tree_object">"tree" object</a> is an object that ties one or more
1113"blob" objects into a directory structure. In addition, a tree object
1114can refer to other tree objects, thus creating a directory hierarchy.</p><p>A <a href="#def_commit_object">"commit" object</a> ties such directory hierarchies
1115together into a <a href="#def_DAG">directed acyclic graph</a> of revisions - each
1116"commit" is associated with exactly one tree (the directory hierarchy at
1117the time of the commit). In addition, a "commit" refers to one or more
1118"parent" commit objects that describe the history of how we arrived at
1119that directory hierarchy.</p><p>As a special case, a commit object with no parents is called the "root"
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:531120commit, and is the point of an initial project commit. Each project
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221121must have at least one root, and while you can tie several different
1122root objects together into one project by creating a commit object which
1123has two or more separate roots as its ultimate parents, that's probably
1124just going to confuse people. So aim for the notion of "one root object
Junio C Hamano0e3cb532007-04-17 08:28:111125per project", even if git itself does not enforce that.</p><p>A <a href="#def_tag_object">"tag" object</a> symbolically identifies and can be
1126used to sign other objects. It contains the identifier and type of
1127another object, a symbolic name (of course!) and, optionally, a
1128signature.</p><p>Regardless of object type, all objects share the following
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221129characteristics: they are all deflated with zlib, and have a header
1130that not only specifies their type, but also provides size information
1131about the data in the object. It's worth noting that the SHA1 hash
1132that is used to name the object is the hash of the original data
1133plus this header, so <code class="literal">sha1sum</code> <span class="emphasis"><em>file</em></span> does not match the object name
1134for <span class="emphasis"><em>file</em></span>.
1135(Historical note: in the dawn of the age of git the hash
1136was 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
1137independently of the contents or the type of the object: all objects can
1138be validated by verifying that (a) their hashes match the content of the
1139file and (b) the object successfully inflates to a stream of bytes that
1140forms a sequence of &lt;ascii type without space&gt; + &lt;space&gt; + &lt;ascii decimal
1141size&gt; + &lt;byte\0&gt; + &lt;binary object data&gt;.</p><p>The structured objects can further have their structure and
1142connectivity to other objects verified. This is generally done with
1143the <code class="literal">git-fsck</code> program, which generates a full dependency graph
1144of all objects, and verifies their internal consistency (in addition
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:531145to just verifying their superficial consistency through the hash).</p><p>The object types in some more detail:</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="blob-object"></a>Blob Object</h2></div></div></div><p>A "blob" object is nothing but a binary blob of data, and doesn't
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221146refer to anything else. There is no signature or any other
1147verification of the data, so while the object is consistent (it <span class="emphasis"><em>is</em></span>
1148indexed by its sha1 hash, so the data itself is certainly correct), it
1149has absolutely no other attributes. No name associations, no
1150permissions. It is purely a blob of data (i.e. normally "file
1151contents").</p><p>In particular, since the blob is entirely defined by its data, if two
1152files in a directory tree (or in multiple different versions of the
1153repository) have the same contents, they will share the same blob
1154object. The object is totally independent of its location in the
1155directory tree, and renaming a file does not change the object that
1156file is associated with in any way.</p><p>A blob is typically created when <a href="git-update-index.html" target="_top">git-update-index(1)</a>
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:531157is run, and its data can be accessed by <a href="git-cat-file.html" target="_top">git-cat-file(1)</a>.</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="tree-object"></a>Tree Object</h2></div></div></div><p>The next hierarchical object type is the "tree" object. A tree object
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221158is a list of mode/name/blob data, sorted by name. Alternatively, the
1159mode data may specify a directory mode, in which case instead of
1160naming a blob, that name is associated with another TREE object.</p><p>Like the "blob" object, a tree object is uniquely determined by the
1161set contents, and so two separate but identical trees will always
1162share the exact same object. This is true at all levels, i.e. it's
1163true for a "leaf" tree (which does not refer to any other trees, only
1164blobs) as well as for a whole subdirectory.</p><p>For that reason a "tree" object is just a pure data abstraction: it
1165has no history, no signatures, no verification of validity, except
1166that since the contents are again protected by the hash itself, we can
1167trust that the tree is immutable and its contents never change.</p><p>So you can trust the contents of a tree to be valid, the same way you
1168can trust the contents of a blob, but you don't know where those
1169contents <span class="emphasis"><em>came</em></span> from.</p><p>Side note on trees: since a "tree" object is a sorted list of
1170"filename+content", you can create a diff between two trees without
1171actually having to unpack two trees. Just ignore all common parts,
1172and your diff will look right. In other words, you can effectively
1173(and efficiently) tell the difference between any two random trees by
1174O(n) where "n" is the size of the difference, rather than the size of
1175the tree.</p><p>Side note 2 on trees: since the name of a "blob" depends entirely and
1176exclusively on its contents (i.e. there are no names or permissions
1177involved), you can see trivial renames or permission changes by
1178noticing that the blob stayed the same. However, renames with data
1179changes need a smarter "diff" implementation.</p><p>A tree is created with <a href="git-write-tree.html" target="_top">git-write-tree(1)</a> and
1180its data can be accessed by <a href="git-ls-tree.html" target="_top">git-ls-tree(1)</a>.
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:531181Two trees can be compared with <a href="git-diff-tree.html" target="_top">git-diff-tree(1)</a>.</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="commit-object"></a>Commit Object</h2></div></div></div><p>The "commit" object is an object that introduces the notion of
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221182history into the picture. In contrast to the other objects, it
1183doesn't just describe the physical state of a tree, it describes how
1184we got there, and why.</p><p>A "commit" is defined by the tree-object that it results in, the
1185parent commits (zero, one or more) that led up to that point, and a
1186comment on what happened. Again, a commit is not trusted per se:
1187the contents are well-defined and "safe" due to the cryptographically
1188strong signatures at all levels, but there is no reason to believe
1189that the tree is "good" or that the merge information makes sense.
1190The parents do not have to actually have any relationship with the
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:531191result, for example.</p><p>Note on commits: unlike some SCM's, commits do not contain
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221192rename information or file mode change information. All of that is
1193implicit in the trees involved (the result tree, and the result trees
1194of the parents), and describing that makes no sense in this idiotic
1195file manager.</p><p>A commit is created with <a href="git-commit-tree.html" target="_top">git-commit-tree(1)</a> and
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:531196its data can be accessed by <a href="git-cat-file.html" target="_top">git-cat-file(1)</a>.</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="trust"></a>Trust</h2></div></div></div><p>An aside on the notion of "trust". Trust is really outside the scope
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221197of "git", but it's worth noting a few things. First off, since
1198everything is hashed with SHA1, you <span class="emphasis"><em>can</em></span> trust that an object is
1199intact and has not been messed with by external sources. So the name
1200of an object uniquely identifies a known state - just not a state that
1201you may want to trust.</p><p>Furthermore, since the SHA1 signature of a commit refers to the
1202SHA1 signatures of the tree it is associated with and the signatures
1203of the parent, a single named commit specifies uniquely a whole set
1204of history, with full contents. You can't later fake any step of the
1205way once you have the name of a commit.</p><p>So to introduce some real trust in the system, the only thing you need
1206to do is to digitally sign just <span class="emphasis"><em>one</em></span> special note, which includes the
1207name of a top-level commit. Your digital signature shows others
1208that you trust that commit, and the immutability of the history of
1209commits tells others that they can trust the whole history.</p><p>In other words, you can easily validate a whole archive by just
1210sending out a single email that tells the people the name (SHA1 hash)
1211of the top commit, and digitally sign that email using something
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:531212like GPG/PGP.</p><p>To assist in this, git also provides the tag object&#8230;</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="tag-object"></a>Tag Object</h2></div></div></div><p>Git provides the "tag" object to simplify creating, managing and
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221213exchanging symbolic and signed tokens. The "tag" object at its
1214simplest simply symbolically identifies another object by containing
1215the sha1, type and symbolic name.</p><p>However it can optionally contain additional signature information
1216(which git doesn't care about as long as there's less than 8k of
1217it). This can then be verified externally to git.</p><p>Note that despite the tag features, "git" itself only handles content
1218integrity; the trust framework (and signature provision and
1219verification) has to come from outside.</p><p>A tag is created with <a href="git-mktag.html" target="_top">git-mktag(1)</a>,
1220its data can be accessed by <a href="git-cat-file.html" target="_top">git-cat-file(1)</a>,
1221and the signature can be verified by
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:531222<a href="git-verify-tag.html" target="_top">git-verify-tag(1)</a>.</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="the-index"></a>The "index" aka "Current Directory Cache"</h2></div></div></div><p>The index is a simple binary file, which contains an efficient
1223representation of the contents of a virtual directory. It
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221224does so by a simple array that associates a set of names, dates,
1225permissions and content (aka "blob") objects together. The cache is
1226always kept ordered by name, and names are unique (with a few very
1227specific rules) at any point in time, but the cache has no long-term
1228meaning, and can be partially updated at any time.</p><p>In particular, the index certainly does not need to be consistent with
1229the current directory contents (in fact, most operations will depend on
1230different ways to make the index <span class="emphasis"><em>not</em></span> be consistent with the directory
1231hierarchy), but it has three very important attributes:</p><p><span class="emphasis"><em>(a) it can re-generate the full state it caches (not just the
1232directory structure: it contains pointers to the "blob" objects so
1233that it can regenerate the data too)</em></span></p><p>As a special case, there is a clear and unambiguous one-way mapping
1234from a current directory cache to a "tree object", which can be
1235efficiently created from just the current directory cache without
1236actually looking at any other data. So a directory cache at any one
1237time uniquely specifies one and only one "tree" object (but has
1238additional data to make it easy to match up that tree object with what
1239has happened in the directory)</p><p><span class="emphasis"><em>(b) it has efficient methods for finding inconsistencies between that
1240cached state ("tree object waiting to be instantiated") and the
1241current state.</em></span></p><p><span class="emphasis"><em>(c) it can additionally efficiently represent information about merge
1242conflicts between different tree objects, allowing each pathname to be
1243associated with sufficient information about the trees involved that
Junio C Hamanodb911ee2007-02-28 08:13:521244you can create a three-way merge between them.</em></span></p><p>Those are the ONLY three things that the directory cache does. It's a
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221245cache, and the normal operation is to re-generate it completely from a
1246known tree object, or update/compare it with a live tree that is being
1247developed. If you blow the directory cache away entirely, you generally
1248haven't lost any information as long as you have the name of the tree
1249that it described.</p><p>At the same time, the index is at the same time also the
1250staging area for creating new trees, and creating a new tree always
1251involves a controlled modification of the index file. In particular,
1252the index file can have the representation of an intermediate tree that
1253has not yet been instantiated. So the index can be thought of as a
1254write-back cache, which can contain dirty information that has not yet
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:531255been written back to the backing store.</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>Generally, all "git" operations work on the index file. Some operations
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221256work <span class="strong"><strong>purely</strong></span> on the index file (showing the current state of the
1257index), but most operations move data to and from the index file. Either
1258from the database or from the working directory. Thus there are four
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:531259main combinations:</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>You update the index with information from the working directory with
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221260the <a href="git-update-index.html" target="_top">git-update-index(1)</a> command. You
1261generally update the index information by just specifying the filename
1262you want to update, like so:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git-update-index filename</p></div><p>but to avoid common mistakes with filename globbing etc, the command
1263will not normally add totally new entries or remove old entries,
1264i.e. it will normally just update existing cache entries.</p><p>To tell git that yes, you really do realize that certain files no
1265longer exist, or that new files should be added, you
1266should use the <code class="literal">&#8212;remove</code> and <code class="literal">&#8212;add</code> flags respectively.</p><p>NOTE! A <code class="literal">&#8212;remove</code> flag does <span class="emphasis"><em>not</em></span> mean that subsequent filenames will
1267necessarily be removed: if the files still exist in your directory
1268structure, the index will be updated with their new status, not
1269removed. The only thing <code class="literal">&#8212;remove</code> means is that update-cache will be
1270considering a removed file to be a valid thing, and if the file really
1271does 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 &#8212;refresh</code>, which
1272will refresh the "stat" information of each index to match the current
1273stat information. It will <span class="emphasis"><em>not</em></span> update the object status itself, and
1274it will only update the fields that are used to quickly test whether
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:531275an object still matches its old backing store object.</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 00:22:221276current index into the set of tree objects that describe that state,
1277and it will return the name of the resulting top-level tree. You can
1278use that tree to re-generate the index at any time by going in the
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:531279other 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 Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221280populate (and overwrite - don't do this if your index contains any
1281unsaved state that you might want to restore later!) your current
1282index. 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
1283earlier. However, that is only your <span class="emphasis"><em>index</em></span> file: your working
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:531284directory 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 00:22:221285files. This is not a very common operation, since normally you'd just
1286keep your files updated, and rather than write to your working
1287directory, you'd tell the index files about the changes in your
1288working 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
1289else's version, or just restore a previous tree, you'd populate your
1290index file with read-tree, and then you need to check out the result
1291with</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
1292if you have an old version of the tree already checked out, you will
1293need to use the "-f" flag (<span class="emphasis"><em>before</em></span> the "-a" flag or the filename) to
1294<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 Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:531295from 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 00:22:221296create a "commit" object that refers to that tree and the history
1297behind it - most notably the "parent" commits that preceded it in
1298history.</p><p>Normally a "commit" has one parent: the previous state of the tree
1299before a certain change was made. However, sometimes it can have two
1300or more parent commits, in which case we call it a "merge", due to the
1301fact that such a commit brings together ("merges") two or more
1302previous states represented by other commits.</p><p>In other words, while a "tree" represents a particular directory state
1303of a working directory, a "commit" represents that state in "time",
1304and explains how we got there.</p><p>You create a commit object by giving it the tree that describes the
1305state 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
1306redirection 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
1307that commit, and you should save it away for later use. Normally,
1308you'd commit a new <code class="literal">HEAD</code> state, and while git doesn't care where you
1309save the note about that state, in practice we tend to just write the
1310result to the file pointed at by <code class="literal">.git/HEAD</code>, so that we can always see
1311what the last committed state was.</p><p>Here is an ASCII art by Jon Loeliger that illustrates how
1312various pieces fit together.</p><div class="literallayout"><p><br>
1313                     commit-tree<br>
1314                      commit obj<br>
1315                       +----+<br>
1316                       |    |<br>
1317                       |    |<br>
1318                       V    V<br>
1319                    +-----------+<br>
1320                    | Object DB |<br>
1321                    |  Backing  |<br>
1322                    |   Store   |<br>
1323                    +-----------+<br>
1324                       ^<br>
1325           write-tree  |     |<br>
1326             tree obj  |     |<br>
1327                       |     |  read-tree<br>
1328                       |     |  tree obj<br>
1329                             V<br>
1330                    +-----------+<br>
1331                    |   Index   |<br>
1332                    |  "cache"  |<br>
1333                    +-----------+<br>
1334         update-index  ^<br>
1335             blob obj  |     |<br>
1336                       |     |<br>
1337    checkout-index -u  |     |  checkout-index<br>
1338             stat      |     |  blob obj<br>
1339                             V<br>
1340                    +-----------+<br>
1341                    |  Working  |<br>
1342                    | Directory |<br>
1343                    +-----------+<br>
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:531344</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 00:22:221345index with various helper tools. For every object, you can use
1346<a href="git-cat-file.html" target="_top">git-cat-file(1)</a> to examine details about the
1347object:</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
1348usually 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
1349there is a special helper for showing that content, called
1350<code class="literal">git-ls-tree</code>, which turns the binary content into a more easily
1351readable form.</p><p>It's especially instructive to look at "commit" objects, since those
1352tend to be small and fairly self-explanatory. In particular, if you
1353follow the convention of having the top commit name in <code class="literal">.git/HEAD</code>,
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:531354you 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 00:22:221355repeating the merge procedure arbitrary times until you finally
1356"commit" the state. The normal situation is that you'd only do one
1357three-way merge (two parents), and commit it, but if you like to, you
1358can do multiple parents in one go.</p><p>To do a three-way merge, you need the two sets of "commit" objects
1359that you want to merge, use those to find the closest common parent (a
1360third "commit" object), and then use those commit objects to find the
1361state of the directory ("tree" object) at these points.</p><p>To get the "base" for the merge, you first look up the common parent
1362of 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
1363now look up the "tree" objects of those commits, which you can easily
1364do 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
1365object.</p><p>Once you know the three trees you are going to merge (the one "original"
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:531366tree, aka the common tree, and the two "result" trees, aka the branches
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221367you want to merge), you do a "merge" read into the index. This will
1368complain if it has to throw away your old index contents, so you should
1369make sure that you've committed those - in fact you would normally
1370always do a merge against your last commit (which should thus match what
1371you 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
1372index file, and you can just write the result out with
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:531373<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 Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221374been added.moved or removed, or if both branches have modified the
1375same file, you will be left with an index tree that contains "merge
1376entries" in it. Such an index tree can <span class="emphasis"><em>NOT</em></span> be written out to a tree
1377object, and you will have to resolve any such merge clashes using
1378other tools before you can write out the result.</p><p>You can examine such index state with <code class="literal">git-ls-files &#8212;unmerged</code>
1379command. An example:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git-read-tree -m $orig HEAD $target<br>
1380$ git-ls-files --unmerged<br>
1381100644 263414f423d0e4d70dae8fe53fa34614ff3e2860 1       hello.c<br>
1382100644 06fa6a24256dc7e560efa5687fa84b51f0263c3a 2       hello.c<br>
1383100644 cc44c73eb783565da5831b4d820c962954019b69 3       hello.c</p></div><p>Each line of the <code class="literal">git-ls-files &#8212;unmerged</code> output begins with
1384the blob mode bits, blob SHA1, <span class="emphasis"><em>stage number</em></span>, and the
1385filename. The <span class="emphasis"><em>stage number</em></span> is git's way to say which tree it
1386came from: stage 1 corresponds to <code class="literal">$orig</code> tree, stage 2 <code class="literal">HEAD</code>
1387tree, and stage3 <code class="literal">$target</code> tree.</p><p>Earlier we said that trivial merges are done inside
1388<code class="literal">git-read-tree -m</code>. For example, if the file did not change
1389from <code class="literal">$orig</code> to <code class="literal">HEAD</code> nor <code class="literal">$target</code>, or if the file changed
1390from <code class="literal">$orig</code> to <code class="literal">HEAD</code> and <code class="literal">$orig</code> to <code class="literal">$target</code> the same way,
1391obviously the final outcome is what is in <code class="literal">HEAD</code>. What the
1392above example shows is that file <code class="literal">hello.c</code> was changed from
1393<code class="literal">$orig</code> to <code class="literal">HEAD</code> and <code class="literal">$orig</code> to <code class="literal">$target</code> in a different way.
1394You could resolve this by running your favorite 3-way merge
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:531395program, e.g. <code class="literal">diff3</code>, <code class="literal">merge</code>, or git's own merge-file, on
1396the blob objects from these three stages yourself, like this:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git-cat-file blob 263414f... &gt;hello.c~1<br>
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221397$ git-cat-file blob 06fa6a2... &gt;hello.c~2<br>
1398$ git-cat-file blob cc44c73... &gt;hello.c~3<br>
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:531399$ 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 00:22:221400with conflict markers if there are conflicts. After verifying
1401the merge result makes sense, you can tell git what the final
1402merge result for this file is by:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ mv -f hello.c~2 hello.c<br>
1403$ git-update-index hello.c</p></div><p>When a path is in unmerged state, running <code class="literal">git-update-index</code> for
1404that path tells git to mark the path resolved.</p><p>The above is the description of a git merge at the lowest level,
1405to help you understand what conceptually happens under the hood.
1406In practice, nobody, not even git itself, uses three <code class="literal">git-cat-file</code>
1407for this. There is <code class="literal">git-merge-index</code> program that extracts the
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:531408stages 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 class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="pack-files"></a>How git stores objects efficiently: pack files</h2></div></div></div><p>We've seen how git stores each object in a file named after the
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221409object's SHA1 hash.</p><p>Unfortunately this system becomes inefficient once a project has a
1410lot of objects. Try this on an old project:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git count-objects<br>
14116930 objects, 47620 kilobytes</p></div><p>The first number is the number of objects which are kept in
1412individual files. The second is the amount of space taken up by
1413those "loose" objects.</p><p>You can save space and make git faster by moving these loose objects in
1414to a "pack file", which stores a group of objects in an efficient
1415compressed format; the details of how pack files are formatted can be
1416found in <a 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>
1417Generating pack...<br>
1418Done counting 6020 objects.<br>
1419Deltifying 6020 objects.<br>
1420 100% (6020/6020) done<br>
1421Writing 6020 objects.<br>
1422 100% (6020/6020) done<br>
1423Total 6020, written 6020 (delta 4070), reused 0 (delta 0)<br>
1424Pack 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
1425pack. This will also remove any unreferenced objects (which may be
1426created when, for example, you use "git reset" to remove a commit).
1427You can verify that the loose objects are gone by looking at the
1428.git/objects directory or by running</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git count-objects<br>
14290 objects, 0 kilobytes</p></div><p>Although the object files are gone, any commands that refer to those
1430objects will work exactly as they did before.</p><p>The <a href="git-gc.html" target="_top">git-gc(1)</a> command performs packing, pruning, and more for
1431you, so is normally the only high-level command you need.</p></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="dangling-objects"></a>Dangling objects</h2></div></div></div><p>The <a href="git-fsck.html" target="_top">git-fsck(1)</a> command will sometimes complain about dangling
1432objects. They are not a problem.</p><p>The most common cause of dangling objects is that you've rebased a
1433branch, or you have pulled from somebody else who rebased a branch&#8212;see
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331434<a 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 Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:531435branch still exists, as does everything it pointed to. The branch
1436pointer 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 Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221437example, a "dangling blob" may arise because you did a "git add" of a
1438file, but then, before you actually committed it and made it part of the
1439bigger picture, you changed something else in that file and committed
1440that <span class="strong"><strong>updated</strong></span> thing - the old state that you added originally ends up
1441not being pointed to by any commit or tree, so it's now a dangling blob
1442object.</p><p>Similarly, when the "recursive" merge strategy runs, and finds that
1443there are criss-cross merges and thus more than one merge base (which is
1444fairly unusual, but it does happen), it will generate one temporary
1445midway tree (or possibly even more, if you had lots of criss-crossing
1446merges and more than two merge bases) as a temporary internal merge
1447base, and again, those are real objects, but the end result will not end
1448up pointing to them, so they end up "dangling" in your repository.</p><p>Generally, dangling objects aren't anything to worry about. They can
1449even be very useful: if you screw something up, the dangling objects can
1450be how you recover your old tree (say, you did a rebase, and realized
1451that you really didn't want to - you can look at what dangling objects
Junio C Hamano3d30fd52007-05-08 00:32:531452you 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
1453from any branch, tag, or other reference. If you decide it's something
1454you 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
1455them. 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
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221456what the "ls" for that directory was), and that may give you some idea
1457of what the operation was that left that dangling object.</p><p>Usually, dangling blobs and trees aren't very interesting. They're
1458almost always the result of either being a half-way mergebase (the blob
1459will often even have the conflict markers from a merge in it, if you
1460have had conflicting merges that you fixed up by hand), or simply
1461because you interrupted a "git fetch" with ^C or something like that,
1462leaving _some_ of the new objects in the object database, but just
1463dangling and useless.</p><p>Anyway, once you are sure that you're not interested in any dangling
1464state, 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
1465repository - it's kind of like doing a filesystem fsck recovery: you
1466don't want to do that while the filesystem is mounted.</p><p>(The same is true of "git-fsck" itself, btw - but since
1467git-fsck never actually <span class="strong"><strong>changes</strong></span> the repository, it just reports
1468on what it found, git-fsck itself is never "dangerous" to run.
1469Running it while somebody is actually changing the repository can cause
1470confusing and scary messages, but it won't actually do anything bad. In
1471contrast, running "git prune" while somebody is actively changing the
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331472repository is a <span class="strong"><strong>BAD</strong></span> idea).</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
1473source code. This section gives you a little guidance to show where to
1474start.</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
1475today, but is small enough to read in one sitting.</p><p>Note that terminology has changed since that revision. For example, the
1476README in that revision uses the word "changeset" to describe what we
1477now call a <a href="#def_commit_object">commit</a>.</p><p>Also, we do not call it "cache" any more, but "index", however, the
1478file is still called <code class="literal">cache.h</code>. Remark: Not much reason to change it now,
1479especially since there is no good single name for it anyway, because it is
1480basically _the_ header file which is included by _all_ of Git's C sources.</p><p>If you grasp the ideas in that initial commit, you should check out a
1481more 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
1482which were extremely simple, and which you used in scripts, piping the
1483output of one into another. This turned out to be good for initial
1484development, since it was easier to test new things. However, recently
1485many of these parts have become builtins, and some of the core has been
1486"libified", i.e. put into libgit.a for performance, portability reasons,
1487and to avoid code duplication.</p><p>By now, you know what the index is (and find the corresponding data
1488structures in <code class="literal">cache.h</code>), and that there are just a couple of object types
1489(blobs, trees, commits and tags) which inherit their common structure from
1490<code class="literal">struct object</code>, which is their first member (and thus, you can cast e.g.
1491<code class="literal">(struct object *)commit</code> to achieve the _same_ as <code class="literal">&amp;commit-&gt;object</code>, i.e.
1492get 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 href="#naming-commits" title="Naming commits">the section called &#8220;Naming commits&#8221;</a>.
1493There are quite a few ways to name an object (and not only revisions!).
1494All of these are handled in <code class="literal">sha1_name.c</code>. Just have a quick look at
1495the function <code class="literal">get_sha1()</code>. A lot of the special handling is done by
1496functions 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:
1497the 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>
1498        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
1499_always_ printed a list of revisions to stdout. It is still functional,
1500and needs to, since most new Git programs start out as scripts using
1501<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
1502options that were relevant for the different plumbing commands that were
1503called 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
1504<code class="literal">revision.h</code>. It wraps the options in a struct named <code class="literal">rev_info</code>, which
1505controls 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
1506<code class="literal">setup_revisions()</code>, which parses the revisions and the common command line
1507options for the revision walker. This information is stored in the struct
1508<code class="literal">rev_info</code> for later consumption. You can do your own command line option
1509parsing after calling <code class="literal">setup_revisions()</code>. After that, you have to call
1510<code class="literal">prepare_revision_walk()</code> for initialization, and then you can get the
1511commits 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,
1512just have a look at the first implementation of <code class="literal">cmd_log()</code>; call
1513<code class="literal">git-show v1.3.0<sub>155^2</sub>4</code> and scroll down to that function (note that you
1514no 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 _contained_ in the
1515command <code class="literal">git</code>. The source side of a builtin is</p><div class="itemizedlist"><ul type="disc"><li>
1516a function called <code class="literal">cmd_&lt;bla&gt;</code>, typically defined in <code class="literal">builtin-&lt;bla&gt;.c</code>,
1517 and declared in <code class="literal">builtin.h</code>,
1518</li><li>
1519an entry in the <code class="literal">commands[]</code> array in <code class="literal">git.c</code>, and
1520</li><li>
1521an entry in <code class="literal">BUILTIN_OBJECTS</code> in the <code class="literal">Makefile</code>.
1522</li></ul></div><p>Sometimes, more than one builtin is contained in one source file. For
1523example, <code class="literal">cmd_whatchanged()</code> and <code class="literal">cmd_log()</code> both reside in <code class="literal">builtin-log.c</code>,
1524since they share quite a bit of code. In that case, the commands which are
1525_not_ named like the <code class="literal">.c</code> file in which they live have to be listed in
1526<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,
1527but 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
1528the organization of Git (after you know the basic concepts).</p><p>So, think about something which you are interested in, say, "how can I
1529access a blob just knowing the object name of it?". The first step is to
1530find a Git command with which you can do it. In this example, it is either
1531<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>
1532is plumbing, and
1533</li><li>
1534was around even in the initial commit (it literally went only through
1535 some 20 revisions as <code class="literal">cat-file.c</code>, was renamed to <code class="literal">builtin-cat-file.c</code>
1536 when made a builtin, and then saw less than 10 versions).
1537</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
1538it does.</p><div class="literallayout"><p>        git_config(git_default_config);<br>
1539        if (argc != 3)<br>
1540                usage("git-cat-file [-t|-s|-e|-p|&lt;type&gt;] &lt;sha1&gt;");<br>
1541        if (get_sha1(argv[2], sha1))<br>
1542                die("Not a valid object name %s", argv[2]);</p></div><p>Let's skip over the obvious details; the only really interesting part
1543here is the call to <code class="literal">get_sha1()</code>. It tries to interpret <code class="literal">argv[2]</code> as an
1544object name, and if it refers to an object which is present in the current
1545repository, 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>
1546<code class="literal">get_sha1()</code> returns 0 on _success_. This might surprise some new
1547 Git hackers, but there is a long tradition in UNIX to return different
1548 negative numbers in case of different errors &#8212; and 0 on success.
1549</li><li>
1550the variable <code class="literal">sha1</code> in the function signature of <code class="literal">get_sha1()</code> is <code class="literal">unsigned
1551 char *</code>, but is actually expected to be a pointer to <code class="literal">unsigned
1552 char[20]</code>. This variable will contain the 160-bit SHA-1 of the given
1553 commit. Note that whenever a SHA-1 is passed as <code class="literal">unsigned char *</code>, it
1554 is the binary representation, as opposed to the ASCII representation in
1555 hex characters, which is passed as <code class="literal">char *</code>.
1556</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>
1557                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
1558object). To know how the function <code class="literal">read_object_with_reference()</code> actually
1559works, find the source code for it (something like <code class="literal">git grep
1560read_object_with | grep ":[a-z]"</code> in the git repository), and read
1561the 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,
1562it helps to search through the output of <code class="literal">git log</code>, and then <code class="literal">git show</code> the
1563corresponding commit.</p><p>Example: If you know that there was some test case for <code class="literal">git bundle</code>, but
1564do not remember where it was (yes, you _could_ <code class="literal">git grep bundle t/</code>, but that
1565does 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,
1566and see that it is in commit 18449ab0&#8230; Now just copy this object name,
1567and 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
1568builtin:</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
1569itself!</p></div></div><div class="chapter" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title"><a name="glossary"></a>Chapter 8. GIT Glossary</h2></div></div></div><div class="variablelist"><dl><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411570<a name="def_alternate_object_database"></a>alternate object database
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221571</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331572 Via the alternates mechanism, a <a href="#def_repository">repository</a>
1573 can inherit part of its <a href="#def_object_database">object database</a>
1574 from another object database, which is called "alternate".
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221575</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411576<a name="def_bare_repository"></a>bare repository
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221577</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331578 A bare repository is normally an appropriately
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411579 named <a href="#def_directory">directory</a> with a <code class="literal">.git</code> suffix that does not
1580 have a locally checked-out copy of any of the files under
1581 <a href="#def_revision">revision</a> control. That is, all of the <code class="literal">git</code>
1582 administrative and control files that would normally be present in the
1583 hidden <code class="literal">.git</code> sub-directory are directly present in the
1584 <code class="literal">repository.git</code> directory instead,
1585 and no other files are present and checked out. Usually publishers of
1586 public repositories make bare repositories available.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221587</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411588<a name="def_blob_object"></a>blob object
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221589</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411590 Untyped <a href="#def_object">object</a>, e.g. the contents of a file.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221591</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411592<a name="def_branch"></a>branch
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221593</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331594 A "branch" is an active line of development. The most recent
1595 <a href="#def_commit">commit</a> on a branch is referred to as the tip of
1596 that branch. The tip of the branch is referenced by a branch
1597 <a href="#def_head">head</a>, which moves forward as additional development
1598 is done on the branch. A single git
1599 <a href="#def_repository">repository</a> can track an arbitrary number of
1600 branches, but your <a href="#def_working_tree">working tree</a> is
1601 associated with just one of them (the "current" or "checked out"
1602 branch), and <a href="#def_HEAD">HEAD</a> points to that branch.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221603</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411604<a name="def_cache"></a>cache
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221605</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411606 Obsolete for: <a href="#def_index">index</a>.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221607</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411608<a name="def_chain"></a>chain
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221609</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411610 A list of objects, where each <a href="#def_object">object</a> in the list contains
1611 a reference to its successor (for example, the successor of a
1612 <a href="#def_commit">commit</a> could be one of its parents).
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221613</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411614<a name="def_changeset"></a>changeset
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221615</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411616 BitKeeper/cvsps speak for "<a href="#def_commit">commit</a>". Since git does not
1617 store changes, but states, it really does not make sense to use the term
1618 "changesets" with git.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221619</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411620<a name="def_checkout"></a>checkout
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221621</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411622 The action of updating the <a href="#def_working_tree">working tree</a> to a
1623 <a href="#def_revision">revision</a> which was stored in the
1624 <a href="#def_object_database">object database</a>.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221625</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411626<a name="def_cherry-picking"></a>cherry-picking
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221627</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411628 In <a href="#def_SCM">SCM</a> jargon, "cherry pick" means to choose a subset of
1629 changes out of a series of changes (typically commits) and record them
1630 as a new series of changes on top of different codebase. In GIT, this is
1631 performed by "git cherry-pick" command to extract the change introduced
1632 by an existing <a href="#def_commit">commit</a> and to record it based on the tip
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331633 of the current <a href="#def_branch">branch</a> as a new commit.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221634</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411635<a name="def_clean"></a>clean
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221636</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331637 A <a href="#def_working_tree">working tree</a> is clean, if it
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411638 corresponds to the <a href="#def_revision">revision</a> referenced by the current
1639 <a href="#def_head">head</a>. Also see "<a href="#def_dirty">dirty</a>".
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221640</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411641<a name="def_commit"></a>commit
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331642</span></dt><dd><p>
1643 As a noun: A single point in the
1644 git history; the entire history of a project is represented as a
1645 set of interrelated commits. The word "commit" is often
1646 used by git in the same places other revision control systems
1647 use the words "revision" or "version". Also used as a short
1648 hand for <a href="#def_commit_object">commit object</a>.
1649</p><p>As a verb: The action of storing a new snapshot of the project's
1650state in the git history, by creating a new commit representing the current
1651state of the <a href="#def_index">index</a> and advancing <a href="#def_HEAD">HEAD</a>
1652to point at the new commit.</p></dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411653<a name="def_commit_object"></a>commit object
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221654</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411655 An <a href="#def_object">object</a> which contains the information about a
1656 particular <a href="#def_revision">revision</a>, such as parents, committer,
1657 author, date and the <a href="#def_tree_object">tree object</a> which corresponds
1658 to the top <a href="#def_directory">directory</a> of the stored
1659 <a href="#def_revision">revision</a>.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221660</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411661<a name="def_core_git"></a>core git
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221662</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411663 Fundamental data structures and utilities of git. Exposes only limited
1664 source code management tools.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221665</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411666<a name="def_DAG"></a>DAG
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221667</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411668 Directed acyclic graph. The <a href="#def_commit">commit</a> objects form a
1669 directed acyclic graph, because they have parents (directed), and the
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331670 graph of commit objects is acyclic (there is no
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411671 <a href="#def_chain">chain</a> which begins and ends with the same
1672 <a href="#def_object">object</a>).
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221673</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411674<a name="def_dangling_object"></a>dangling object
Junio C Hamanoaa83a7d2007-03-05 02:37:291675</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411676 An <a href="#def_unreachable_object">unreachable object</a> which is not
1677 <a href="#def_reachable">reachable</a> even from other unreachable objects; a
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331678 dangling object has no references to it from any
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411679 reference or <a href="#def_object">object</a> in the <a href="#def_repository">repository</a>.
Junio C Hamanoaa83a7d2007-03-05 02:37:291680</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331681<a name="def_detached_HEAD"></a>detached HEAD
1682</span></dt><dd>
1683 Normally the <a href="#def_HEAD">HEAD</a> stores the name of a
1684 <a href="#def_branch">branch</a>. However, git also allows you to check
1685 out an arbitrary commit that isn't necessarily the tip of any
1686 particular branch. In this case HEAD is said to be "detached".
1687</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411688<a name="def_dircache"></a>dircache
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221689</span></dt><dd>
1690 You are <span class="strong"><strong>waaaaay</strong></span> behind.
1691</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411692<a name="def_directory"></a>directory
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221693</span></dt><dd>
1694 The list you get with "ls" :-)
1695</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411696<a name="def_dirty"></a>dirty
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221697</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331698 A <a href="#def_working_tree">working tree</a> is said to be "dirty" if
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411699 it contains modifications which have not been committed to the current
1700 <a href="#def_branch">branch</a>.
1701</dd><dt><span class="term">
1702<a name="def_ent"></a>ent
1703</span></dt><dd>
1704 Favorite synonym to "<a href="#def_tree-ish">tree-ish</a>" by some total geeks. See
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221705 <code class="literal">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ent_(Middle-earth)</code> for an in-depth
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411706 explanation. Avoid this term, not to confuse people.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221707</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411708<a name="def_fast_forward"></a>fast forward
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221709</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411710 A fast-forward is a special type of <a href="#def_merge">merge</a> where you have a
1711 <a href="#def_revision">revision</a> and you are "merging" another
1712 <a href="#def_branch">branch</a>'s changes that happen to be a descendant of what
1713 you have. In such these cases, you do not make a new <a href="#def_merge">merge</a>
1714 <a href="#def_commit">commit</a> but instead just update to his
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331715 revision. This will happen frequently on a
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411716 <a href="#def_tracking_branch">tracking branch</a> of a remote
1717 <a href="#def_repository">repository</a>.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221718</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411719<a name="def_fetch"></a>fetch
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221720</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411721 Fetching a <a href="#def_branch">branch</a> means to get the
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331722 branch's <a href="#def_head_ref">head ref</a> from a remote
1723 <a href="#def_repository">repository</a>, to find out which objects are
1724 missing from the local <a href="#def_object_database">object database</a>,
1725 and to get them, too. See also <a href="git-fetch.html" target="_top">git-fetch(1)</a>.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221726</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411727<a name="def_file_system"></a>file system
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221728</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411729 Linus Torvalds originally designed git to be a user space file system,
1730 i.e. the infrastructure to hold files and directories. That ensured the
1731 efficiency and speed of git.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221732</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411733<a name="def_git_archive"></a>git archive
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221734</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411735 Synonym for <a href="#def_repository">repository</a> (for arch people).
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221736</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411737<a name="def_grafts"></a>grafts
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221738</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411739 Grafts enables two otherwise different lines of development to be joined
1740 together by recording fake ancestry information for commits. This way
1741 you can make git pretend the set of parents a <a href="#def_commit">commit</a> has
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331742 is different from what was recorded when the commit was
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411743 created. Configured via the <code class="literal">.git/info/grafts</code> file.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221744</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411745<a name="def_hash"></a>hash
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221746</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411747 In git's context, synonym to <a href="#def_object_name">object name</a>.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221748</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411749<a name="def_head"></a>head
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221750</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331751 A named reference to the <a href="#def_commit">commit</a> at the tip of a
1752 <a href="#def_branch">branch</a>. Heads are stored in
1753 <code class="literal">$GIT_DIR/refs/heads/</code>, except when using packed refs. (See
1754 <a href="git-pack-refs.html" target="_top">git-pack-refs(1)</a>.)
1755</dd><dt><span class="term">
1756<a name="def_HEAD"></a>HEAD
1757</span></dt><dd>
1758 The current branch. In more detail: Your <a href="#def_working_tree">working tree</a> is normally derived from the state of the tree
1759 referred to by HEAD. HEAD is a reference to one of the
1760 <a href="#def_head">heads</a> in your repository, except when using a
1761 <a href="#def_detached_HEAD">detached HEAD</a>, in which case it may
1762 reference an arbitrary commit.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221763</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411764<a name="def_head_ref"></a>head ref
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221765</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331766 A synonym for <a href="#def_head">head</a>.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221767</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411768<a name="def_hook"></a>hook
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221769</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411770 During the normal execution of several git commands, call-outs are made
1771 to optional scripts that allow a developer to add functionality or
1772 checking. Typically, the hooks allow for a command to be pre-verified
1773 and potentially aborted, and allow for a post-notification after the
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331774 operation is done. The hook scripts are found in the
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411775 <code class="literal">$GIT_DIR/hooks/</code> <a href="#def_directory">directory</a>, and are enabled by simply
1776 making them executable.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221777</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411778<a name="def_index"></a>index
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221779</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411780 A collection of files with stat information, whose contents are stored
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331781 as objects. The index is a stored version of your working
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411782 <a href="#def_tree">tree</a>. Truth be told, it can also contain a second, and even
1783 a third version of a <a href="#def_working_tree">working tree</a>, which are used
1784 when merging.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221785</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411786<a name="def_index_entry"></a>index entry
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221787</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411788 The information regarding a particular file, stored in the
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331789 <a href="#def_index">index</a>. An index entry can be unmerged, if a
1790 <a href="#def_merge">merge</a> was started, but not yet finished (i.e. if
1791 the index contains multiple versions of that file).
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221792</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411793<a name="def_master"></a>master
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221794</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331795 The default development <a href="#def_branch">branch</a>. Whenever you
1796 create a git <a href="#def_repository">repository</a>, a branch named
1797 "master" is created, and becomes the active branch. In most
1798 cases, this contains the local development, though that is
1799 purely by convention and is not required.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221800</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411801<a name="def_merge"></a>merge
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331802</span></dt><dd><p>
1803 As a verb: To bring the contents of another
1804 <a href="#def_branch">branch</a> (possibly from an external
1805 <a href="#def_repository">repository</a>) into the current branch. In the
1806 case where the merged-in branch is from a different repository,
1807 this is done by first <a href="#def_fetch">fetching</a> the remote branch
1808 and then merging the result into the current branch. This
1809 combination of fetch and merge operations is called a
1810 <a href="#def_pull">pull</a>. Merging is performed by an automatic process
1811 that identifies changes made since the branches diverged, and
1812 then applies all those changes together. In cases where changes
1813 conflict, manual intervention may be required to complete the
1814 merge.
1815</p><p>As a noun: unless it is a <a href="#def_fast_forward">fast forward</a>, a
1816successful merge results in the creation of a new <a href="#def_commit">commit</a>
1817representing the result of the merge, and having as
1818<a href="#def_parent">parents</a> the tips of the merged <a href="#def_branch">branches</a>.
1819This commit is referred to as a "merge commit", or sometimes just a
1820"merge".</p></dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411821<a name="def_object"></a>object
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221822</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411823 The unit of storage in git. It is uniquely identified by the
1824 <a href="#def_SHA1">SHA1</a> of its contents. Consequently, an
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331825 object can not be changed.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221826</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411827<a name="def_object_database"></a>object database
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221828</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411829 Stores a set of "objects", and an individual <a href="#def_object">object</a> is
1830 identified by its <a href="#def_object_name">object name</a>. The objects usually
1831 live in <code class="literal">$GIT_DIR/objects/</code>.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221832</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411833<a name="def_object_identifier"></a>object identifier
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221834</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411835 Synonym for <a href="#def_object_name">object name</a>.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221836</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411837<a name="def_object_name"></a>object name
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221838</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411839 The unique identifier of an <a href="#def_object">object</a>. The <a href="#def_hash">hash</a>
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331840 of the object's contents using the Secure Hash Algorithm
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411841 1 and usually represented by the 40 character hexadecimal encoding of
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331842 the <a href="#def_hash">hash</a> of the object (possibly followed by
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411843 a white space).
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221844</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411845<a name="def_object_type"></a>object type
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221846</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411847 One of the identifiers
1848 "<a href="#def_commit">commit</a>","<a href="#def_tree">tree</a>","<a href="#def_tag">tag</a>" or "<a href="#def_blob_object">blob</a>"
1849 describing the type of an <a href="#def_object">object</a>.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221850</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411851<a name="def_octopus"></a>octopus
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221852</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411853 To <a href="#def_merge">merge</a> more than two branches. Also denotes an
1854 intelligent predator.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221855</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411856<a name="def_origin"></a>origin
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221857</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411858 The default upstream <a href="#def_repository">repository</a>. Most projects have
1859 at least one upstream project which they track. By default
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331860 <span class="emphasis"><em>origin</em></span> is used for that purpose. New upstream updates
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221861 will be fetched into remote tracking branches named
1862 origin/name-of-upstream-branch, which you can see using
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411863 "git <a href="#def_branch">branch</a> -r".
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221864</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411865<a name="def_pack"></a>pack
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221866</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411867 A set of objects which have been compressed into one file (to save space
1868 or to transmit them efficiently).
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221869</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411870<a name="def_pack_index"></a>pack index
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221871</span></dt><dd>
1872 The list of identifiers, and other information, of the objects in a
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411873 <a href="#def_pack">pack</a>, to assist in efficiently accessing the contents of a
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331874 pack.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221875</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411876<a name="def_parent"></a>parent
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221877</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411878 A <a href="#def_commit_object">commit object</a> contains a (possibly empty) list
1879 of the logical predecessor(s) in the line of development, i.e. its
1880 parents.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221881</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411882<a name="def_pickaxe"></a>pickaxe
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221883</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411884 The term <a href="#def_pickaxe">pickaxe</a> refers to an option to the diffcore
1885 routines that help select changes that add or delete a given text
1886 string. With the &#8212;pickaxe-all option, it can be used to view the full
1887 <a href="#def_changeset">changeset</a> that introduced or removed, say, a
1888 particular line of text. See <a href="git-diff.html" target="_top">git-diff(1)</a>.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221889</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411890<a name="def_plumbing"></a>plumbing
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221891</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411892 Cute name for <a href="#def_core_git">core git</a>.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221893</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411894<a name="def_porcelain"></a>porcelain
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221895</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411896 Cute name for programs and program suites depending on
1897 <a href="#def_core_git">core git</a>, presenting a high level access to
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331898 core git. Porcelains expose more of a <a href="#def_SCM">SCM</a>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411899 interface than the <a href="#def_plumbing">plumbing</a>.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221900</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411901<a name="def_pull"></a>pull
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221902</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411903 Pulling a <a href="#def_branch">branch</a> means to <a href="#def_fetch">fetch</a> it and
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331904 <a href="#def_merge">merge</a> it. See also <a href="git-pull.html" target="_top">git-pull(1)</a>.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221905</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411906<a name="def_push"></a>push
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221907</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331908 Pushing a <a href="#def_branch">branch</a> means to get the branch's
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411909 <a href="#def_head_ref">head ref</a> from a remote <a href="#def_repository">repository</a>,
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331910 find out if it is an ancestor to the branch's local
1911 head ref is a direct, and in that case, putting all
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411912 objects, which are <a href="#def_reachable">reachable</a> from the local
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331913 head ref, and which are missing from the remote
1914 repository, into the remote
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411915 <a href="#def_object_database">object database</a>, and updating the remote
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331916 head ref. If the remote <a href="#def_head">head</a> is not an
1917 ancestor to the local head, the push fails.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221918</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411919<a name="def_reachable"></a>reachable
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221920</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411921 All of the ancestors of a given <a href="#def_commit">commit</a> are said to be
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331922 "reachable" from that commit. More
1923 generally, one <a href="#def_object">object</a> is reachable from
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411924 another if we can reach the one from the other by a <a href="#def_chain">chain</a>
1925 that follows <a href="#def_tag">tags</a> to whatever they tag,
1926 <a href="#def_commit_object">commits</a> to their parents or trees, and
1927 <a href="#def_tree_object">trees</a> to the trees or <a href="#def_blob_object">blobs</a>
1928 that they contain.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221929</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411930<a name="def_rebase"></a>rebase
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221931</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411932 To reapply a series of changes from a <a href="#def_branch">branch</a> to a
1933 different base, and reset the <a href="#def_head">head</a> of that branch
1934 to the result.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221935</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411936<a name="def_ref"></a>ref
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221937</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411938 A 40-byte hex representation of a <a href="#def_SHA1">SHA1</a> or a name that
1939 denotes a particular <a href="#def_object">object</a>. These may be stored in
1940 <code class="literal">$GIT_DIR/refs/</code>.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221941</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411942<a name="def_refspec"></a>refspec
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221943</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411944 A <a href="#def_refspec">refspec</a> is used by <a href="#def_fetch">fetch</a> and
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331945 <a href="#def_push">push</a> to describe the mapping between remote
1946 <a href="#def_ref">ref</a> and local ref. They are combined with a colon in
1947 the format &lt;src&gt;:&lt;dst&gt;, preceded by an optional plus sign, +.
1948 For example: <code class="literal">git fetch $URL
1949 refs/heads/master:refs/heads/origin</code> means "grab the master
1950 <a href="#def_branch">branch</a> <a href="#def_head">head</a> from the $URL and store
1951 it as my origin branch head". And <code class="literal">git push
1952 $URL refs/heads/master:refs/heads/to-upstream</code> means "publish my
1953 master branch head as to-upstream branch at $URL". See also
1954 <a href="git-push.html" target="_top">git-push(1)</a>
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221955</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411956<a name="def_repository"></a>repository
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221957</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331958 A collection of refs together with an
1959 <a href="#def_object_database">object database</a> containing all objects
1960 which are <a href="#def_reachable">reachable</a> from the refs, possibly
1961 accompanied by meta data from one or more porcelains. A
1962 repository can share an object database with other repositories.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221963</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411964<a name="def_resolve"></a>resolve
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221965</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411966 The action of fixing up manually what a failed automatic
1967 <a href="#def_merge">merge</a> left behind.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221968</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411969<a name="def_revision"></a>revision
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221970</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411971 A particular state of files and directories which was stored in the
1972 <a href="#def_object_database">object database</a>. It is referenced by a
1973 <a href="#def_commit_object">commit object</a>.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221974</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411975<a name="def_rewind"></a>rewind
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221976</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411977 To throw away part of the development, i.e. to assign the
1978 <a href="#def_head">head</a> to an earlier <a href="#def_revision">revision</a>.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221979</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411980<a name="def_SCM"></a>SCM
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221981</span></dt><dd>
1982 Source code management (tool).
1983</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411984<a name="def_SHA1"></a>SHA1
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221985</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411986 Synonym for <a href="#def_object_name">object name</a>.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221987</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411988<a name="def_shallow_repository"></a>shallow repository
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221989</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331990 A shallow repository has an incomplete
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411991 history some of whose commits have parents cauterized away (in other
1992 words, git is told to pretend that these commits do not have the
1993 parents, even though they are recorded in the <a href="#def_commit_object">commit object</a>). This is sometimes useful when you are interested only in the
1994 recent history of a project even though the real history recorded in the
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:331995 upstream is much larger. A shallow repository
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411996 is created by giving the <code class="literal">&#8212;depth</code> option to <a href="git-clone.html" target="_top">git-clone(1)</a>, and
1997 its history can be later deepened with <a href="git-fetch.html" target="_top">git-fetch(1)</a>.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:221998</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:411999<a name="def_symref"></a>symref
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222000</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:332001 Symbolic reference: instead of containing the <a href="#def_SHA1">SHA1</a>
2002 id itself, it is of the format <span class="emphasis"><em>ref: refs/some/thing</em></span> and when
2003 referenced, it recursively dereferences to this reference.
2004 <span class="emphasis"><em><a href="#def_HEAD">HEAD</a></em></span> is a prime example of a symref. Symbolic
2005 references are manipulated with the <a href="git-symbolic-ref.html" target="_top">git-symbolic-ref(1)</a>
2006 command.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222007</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412008<a name="def_tag"></a>tag
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222009</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:332010 A <a href="#def_ref">ref</a> pointing to a tag or
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412011 <a href="#def_commit_object">commit object</a>. In contrast to a <a href="#def_head">head</a>,
2012 a tag is not changed by a <a href="#def_commit">commit</a>. Tags (not
2013 <a href="#def_tag_object">tag objects</a>) are stored in <code class="literal">$GIT_DIR/refs/tags/</code>. A
2014 git tag has nothing to do with a Lisp tag (which would be
2015 called an <a href="#def_object_type">object type</a> in git's context). A
2016 tag is most typically used to mark a particular point in the
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:332017 commit ancestry <a href="#def_chain">chain</a>.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222018</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412019<a name="def_tag_object"></a>tag object
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222020</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412021 An <a href="#def_object">object</a> containing a <a href="#def_ref">ref</a> pointing to
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:332022 another object, which can contain a message just like a
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412023 <a href="#def_commit_object">commit object</a>. It can also contain a (PGP)
2024 signature, in which case it is called a "signed <a href="#def_tag_object">tag object</a>".
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222025</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412026<a name="def_topic_branch"></a>topic branch
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222027</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412028 A regular git <a href="#def_branch">branch</a> that is used by a developer to
2029 identify a conceptual line of development. Since branches are very easy
2030 and inexpensive, it is often desirable to have several small branches
2031 that each contain very well defined concepts or small incremental yet
2032 related changes.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222033</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412034<a name="def_tracking_branch"></a>tracking branch
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222035</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412036 A regular git <a href="#def_branch">branch</a> that is used to follow changes from
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:332037 another <a href="#def_repository">repository</a>. A tracking
2038 branch should not contain direct modifications or have local commits
2039 made to it. A tracking branch can usually be
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412040 identified as the right-hand-side <a href="#def_ref">ref</a> in a Pull:
2041 <a href="#def_refspec">refspec</a>.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222042</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412043<a name="def_tree"></a>tree
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222044</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:332045 Either a <a href="#def_working_tree">working tree</a>, or a <a href="#def_tree_object">tree object</a> together with the dependent blob and tree objects
2046 (i.e. a stored representation of a working tree).
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222047</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412048<a name="def_tree_object"></a>tree object
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222049</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412050 An <a href="#def_object">object</a> containing a list of file names and modes along
2051 with refs to the associated blob and/or tree objects. A
2052 <a href="#def_tree">tree</a> is equivalent to a <a href="#def_directory">directory</a>.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222053</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412054<a name="def_tree-ish"></a>tree-ish
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222055</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:332056 A <a href="#def_ref">ref</a> pointing to either a <a href="#def_commit_object">commit object</a>, a <a href="#def_tree_object">tree object</a>, or a <a href="#def_tag_object">tag object</a> pointing to a tag or commit or tree object.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222057</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412058<a name="def_unmerged_index"></a>unmerged index
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222059</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412060 An <a href="#def_index">index</a> which contains unmerged
2061 <a href="#def_index_entry">index entries</a>.
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222062</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412063<a name="def_unreachable_object"></a>unreachable object
Junio C Hamanoaa83a7d2007-03-05 02:37:292064</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412065 An <a href="#def_object">object</a> which is not <a href="#def_reachable">reachable</a> from a
2066 <a href="#def_branch">branch</a>, <a href="#def_tag">tag</a>, or any other reference.
Junio C Hamanoaa83a7d2007-03-05 02:37:292067</dd><dt><span class="term">
Junio C Hamano3d5b41f2007-03-26 02:33:412068<a name="def_working_tree"></a>working tree
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222069</span></dt><dd>
Junio C Hamano75485c82007-05-19 04:20:332070 The tree of actual checked out files. The working tree is
2071 normally equal to the <a href="#def_HEAD">HEAD</a> plus any local changes
2072 that you have made but not yet committed.
2073</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 Start</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 following chapters
2074will explain 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>
2075$ cd project<br>
2076$ git init<br>
2077Initialized empty Git repository in .git/<br>
2078$ git add .<br>
2079$ git commit</p></div><p>From a remote repository:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git clone git://example.com/pub/project.git<br>
2080$ 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>
2081$ git checkout test  # switch working directory to branch "test"<br>
2082$ git branch new     # create branch "new" starting at current HEAD<br>
2083$ git branch -d new  # delete branch "new"</p></div><p>Instead of basing new branch on current HEAD (the default), use:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git branch new test    # branch named "test"<br>
2084$ git branch new v2.6.15 # tag named v2.6.15<br>
2085$ git branch new HEAD^   # commit before the most recent<br>
2086$ git branch new HEAD^^  # commit before that<br>
2087$ 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>
2088$ git branch -r         # list<br>
2089  origin/master<br>
2090  origin/next<br>
2091  ...<br>
2092$ git checkout -b masterwork origin/master</p></div><p>Fetch a branch from a different repository, and give it a new
2093name in your repository:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git fetch git://example.com/project.git theirbranch:mybranch<br>
2094$ 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>
2095$ git remote                    # list remote repositories<br>
2096example<br>
2097origin<br>
2098$ git remote show example       # get details<br>
2099* remote example<br>
2100  URL: git://example.com/project.git<br>
2101  Tracked remote branches<br>
2102    master next ...<br>
2103$ git fetch example             # update branches from example<br>
2104$ 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>
2105$ git log                   # list all commits<br>
2106$ git log src/              # ...modifying src/<br>
2107$ git log v2.6.15..v2.6.16  # ...in v2.6.16, not in v2.6.15<br>
2108$ git log master..test      # ...in branch test, not in branch master<br>
2109$ git log test..master      # ...in branch master, but not in test<br>
2110$ git log test...master     # ...in one branch, not in both<br>
2111$ git log -S'foo()'         # ...where difference contain "foo()"<br>
2112$ git log --since="2 weeks ago"<br>
2113$ git log -p                # show patches as well<br>
2114$ git show                  # most recent commit<br>
2115$ git diff v2.6.15..v2.6.16 # diff between two tagged versions<br>
2116$ git diff v2.6.15..HEAD    # diff with current head<br>
2117$ git grep "foo()"          # search working directory for "foo()"<br>
2118$ git grep v2.6.15 "foo()"  # search old tree for "foo()"<br>
2119$ 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>
2120$ git bisect bad                # current version is bad<br>
2121$ git bisect good v2.6.13-rc2   # last known good revision<br>
2122Bisecting: 675 revisions left to test after this<br>
2123                                # test here, then:<br>
2124$ git bisect good               # if this revision is good, or<br>
2125$ git bisect bad                # if this revision is bad.<br>
2126                                # 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>
2127[user]<br>
2128        name = Your Name Comes Here<br>
2129        email = you@yourdomain.example.com<br>
2130EOF</p></div><p>Select file contents to include in the next commit, then make the
2131commit:</p><div class="literallayout"><p>$ git add a.txt    # updated file<br>
2132$ git add b.txt    # new file<br>
2133$ git rm c.txt     # old file<br>
2134$ 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>
2135$ 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>
2136$ git pull git://example.com/project.git master<br>
2137                   # fetch and merge in remote branch<br>
2138$ 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>
2139                                # in HEAD but not in origin<br>
2140$ git am mbox # import patches from the mailbox "mbox"</p></div><p>Fetch a branch in a different git repository, then merge into the
2141current 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
2142current 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
2143branch 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>
2144$ 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:
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222145 - It must be readable in order, from beginning to end, by
2146 someone intelligent with a basic grasp of the unix
2147 commandline, but without any special knowledge of git. If
2148 necessary, any other prerequisites should be specifically
2149 mentioned as they arise.
2150 - Whenever possible, section headings should clearly describe
2151 the task they explain how to do, in language that requires
2152 no more knowledge than necessary: for example, "importing
2153 patches into a project" rather than "the git-am command"</p><p>Think about how to create a clear chapter dependency graph that will
2154allow people to get to important topics without necessarily reading
Junio C Hamanoed7f4f62007-05-20 09:09:092155everything in between.</p><p>Scan Documentation/ for other stuff left out; in particular:
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222156 howto's
2157 some of technical/?
2158 hooks
2159 list of commands in <a href="git.html" target="_top">git(1)</a></p><p>Scan email archives for other stuff left out</p><p>Scan man pages to see if any assume more background than this manual
2160provides.</p><p>Simplify beginning by suggesting disconnected head instead of
Junio C Hamanoaa83a7d2007-03-05 02:37:292161temporary branch creation?</p><p>Add more good examples. Entire sections of just cookbook examples
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222162might be a good idea; maybe make an "advanced examples" section a
2163standard 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 08:32:042164documentation.</p><p>Add a section on working with other version control systems, including
Junio C Hamano8f62db92007-02-01 00:22:222165CVS, 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></div></div></body></html>