Documentation / git-am.txton commit Merge branch 'jn/maint-1.6.3-check-ref-format-doc' into maint-1.6.4 (1c92a08)
   1git-am(1)
   2=========
   3
   4NAME
   5----
   6git-am - Apply a series of patches from a mailbox
   7
   8
   9SYNOPSIS
  10--------
  11[verse]
  12'git am' [--signoff] [--keep] [--utf8 | --no-utf8]
  13         [--3way] [--interactive] [--committer-date-is-author-date]
  14         [--ignore-date]
  15         [--whitespace=<option>] [-C<n>] [-p<n>] [--directory=<dir>]
  16         [--reject] [-q | --quiet]
  17         [<mbox> | <Maildir>...]
  18'git am' (--skip | --resolved | --abort)
  19
  20DESCRIPTION
  21-----------
  22Splits mail messages in a mailbox into commit log message,
  23authorship information and patches, and applies them to the
  24current branch.
  25
  26OPTIONS
  27-------
  28<mbox>|<Maildir>...::
  29        The list of mailbox files to read patches from. If you do not
  30        supply this argument, the command reads from the standard input.
  31        If you supply directories, they will be treated as Maildirs.
  32
  33-s::
  34--signoff::
  35        Add a `Signed-off-by:` line to the commit message, using
  36        the committer identity of yourself.
  37
  38-k::
  39--keep::
  40        Pass `-k` flag to 'git-mailinfo' (see linkgit:git-mailinfo[1]).
  41
  42-q::
  43--quiet::
  44        Be quiet. Only print error messages.
  45
  46-u::
  47--utf8::
  48        Pass `-u` flag to 'git-mailinfo' (see linkgit:git-mailinfo[1]).
  49        The proposed commit log message taken from the e-mail
  50        is re-coded into UTF-8 encoding (configuration variable
  51        `i18n.commitencoding` can be used to specify project's
  52        preferred encoding if it is not UTF-8).
  53+
  54This was optional in prior versions of git, but now it is the
  55default.   You can use `--no-utf8` to override this.
  56
  57--no-utf8::
  58        Pass `-n` flag to 'git-mailinfo' (see
  59        linkgit:git-mailinfo[1]).
  60
  61-3::
  62--3way::
  63        When the patch does not apply cleanly, fall back on
  64        3-way merge if the patch records the identity of blobs
  65        it is supposed to apply to and we have those blobs
  66        available locally.
  67
  68--whitespace=<option>::
  69-C<n>::
  70-p<n>::
  71--directory=<dir>::
  72--reject::
  73        These flags are passed to the 'git-apply' (see linkgit:git-apply[1])
  74        program that applies
  75        the patch.
  76
  77-i::
  78--interactive::
  79        Run interactively.
  80
  81--committer-date-is-author-date::
  82        By default the command records the date from the e-mail
  83        message as the commit author date, and uses the time of
  84        commit creation as the committer date. This allows the
  85        user to lie about the committer date by using the same
  86        value as the author date.
  87
  88--ignore-date::
  89        By default the command records the date from the e-mail
  90        message as the commit author date, and uses the time of
  91        commit creation as the committer date. This allows the
  92        user to lie about the author date by using the same
  93        value as the committer date.
  94
  95--skip::
  96        Skip the current patch.  This is only meaningful when
  97        restarting an aborted patch.
  98
  99-r::
 100--resolved::
 101        After a patch failure (e.g. attempting to apply
 102        conflicting patch), the user has applied it by hand and
 103        the index file stores the result of the application.
 104        Make a commit using the authorship and commit log
 105        extracted from the e-mail message and the current index
 106        file, and continue.
 107
 108--resolvemsg=<msg>::
 109        When a patch failure occurs, <msg> will be printed
 110        to the screen before exiting.  This overrides the
 111        standard message informing you to use `--resolved`
 112        or `--skip` to handle the failure.  This is solely
 113        for internal use between 'git-rebase' and 'git-am'.
 114
 115--abort::
 116        Restore the original branch and abort the patching operation.
 117
 118DISCUSSION
 119----------
 120
 121The commit author name is taken from the "From: " line of the
 122message, and commit author date is taken from the "Date: " line
 123of the message.  The "Subject: " line is used as the title of
 124the commit, after stripping common prefix "[PATCH <anything>]".
 125The "Subject: " line is supposed to concisely describe what the
 126commit is about in one line of text.
 127
 128"From: " and "Subject: " lines starting the body (the rest of the
 129message after the blank line terminating the RFC2822 headers)
 130override the respective commit author name and title values taken
 131from the headers.
 132
 133The commit message is formed by the title taken from the
 134"Subject: ", a blank line and the body of the message up to
 135where the patch begins.  Excess whitespace at the end of each
 136line is automatically stripped.
 137
 138The patch is expected to be inline, directly following the
 139message.  Any line that is of the form:
 140
 141* three-dashes and end-of-line, or
 142* a line that begins with "diff -", or
 143* a line that begins with "Index: "
 144
 145is taken as the beginning of a patch, and the commit log message
 146is terminated before the first occurrence of such a line.
 147
 148When initially invoking `git am`, you give it the names of the mailboxes
 149to process.  Upon seeing the first patch that does not apply, it
 150aborts in the middle.  You can recover from this in one of two ways:
 151
 152. skip the current patch by re-running the command with the '--skip'
 153  option.
 154
 155. hand resolve the conflict in the working directory, and update
 156  the index file to bring it into a state that the patch should
 157  have produced.  Then run the command with the '--resolved' option.
 158
 159The command refuses to process new mailboxes while the `.git/rebase-apply`
 160directory exists, so if you decide to start over from scratch,
 161run `rm -f -r .git/rebase-apply` before running the command with mailbox
 162names.
 163
 164Before any patches are applied, ORIG_HEAD is set to the tip of the
 165current branch.  This is useful if you have problems with multiple
 166commits, like running 'git am' on the wrong branch or an error in the
 167commits that is more easily fixed by changing the mailbox (e.g.
 168errors in the "From:" lines).
 169
 170
 171SEE ALSO
 172--------
 173linkgit:git-apply[1].
 174
 175
 176Author
 177------
 178Written by Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
 179
 180Documentation
 181--------------
 182Documentation by Petr Baudis, Junio C Hamano and the git-list <git@vger.kernel.org>.
 183
 184GIT
 185---
 186Part of the linkgit:git[1] suite