Documentation / git-fast-export.txton commit README: update stale and/or incorrect information (33b29fd)
   1git-fast-export(1)
   2==================
   3
   4NAME
   5----
   6git-fast-export - Git data exporter
   7
   8
   9SYNOPSIS
  10--------
  11[verse]
  12'git fast-export [options]' | 'git fast-import'
  13
  14DESCRIPTION
  15-----------
  16This program dumps the given revisions in a form suitable to be piped
  17into 'git fast-import'.
  18
  19You can use it as a human-readable bundle replacement (see
  20linkgit:git-bundle[1]), or as a kind of an interactive
  21'git filter-branch'.
  22
  23
  24OPTIONS
  25-------
  26--progress=<n>::
  27        Insert 'progress' statements every <n> objects, to be shown by
  28        'git fast-import' during import.
  29
  30--signed-tags=(verbatim|warn|strip|abort)::
  31        Specify how to handle signed tags.  Since any transformation
  32        after the export can change the tag names (which can also happen
  33        when excluding revisions) the signatures will not match.
  34+
  35When asking to 'abort' (which is the default), this program will die
  36when encountering a signed tag.  With 'strip', the tags will be made
  37unsigned, with 'verbatim', they will be silently exported
  38and with 'warn', they will be exported, but you will see a warning.
  39
  40--tag-of-filtered-object=(abort|drop|rewrite)::
  41        Specify how to handle tags whose tagged object is filtered out.
  42        Since revisions and files to export can be limited by path,
  43        tagged objects may be filtered completely.
  44+
  45When asking to 'abort' (which is the default), this program will die
  46when encountering such a tag.  With 'drop' it will omit such tags from
  47the output.  With 'rewrite', if the tagged object is a commit, it will
  48rewrite the tag to tag an ancestor commit (via parent rewriting; see
  49linkgit:git-rev-list[1])
  50
  51-M::
  52-C::
  53        Perform move and/or copy detection, as described in the
  54        linkgit:git-diff[1] manual page, and use it to generate
  55        rename and copy commands in the output dump.
  56+
  57Note that earlier versions of this command did not complain and
  58produced incorrect results if you gave these options.
  59
  60--export-marks=<file>::
  61        Dumps the internal marks table to <file> when complete.
  62        Marks are written one per line as `:markid SHA-1`. Only marks
  63        for revisions are dumped; marks for blobs are ignored.
  64        Backends can use this file to validate imports after they
  65        have been completed, or to save the marks table across
  66        incremental runs.  As <file> is only opened and truncated
  67        at completion, the same path can also be safely given to
  68        \--import-marks.
  69
  70--import-marks=<file>::
  71        Before processing any input, load the marks specified in
  72        <file>.  The input file must exist, must be readable, and
  73        must use the same format as produced by \--export-marks.
  74+
  75Any commits that have already been marked will not be exported again.
  76If the backend uses a similar \--import-marks file, this allows for
  77incremental bidirectional exporting of the repository by keeping the
  78marks the same across runs.
  79
  80--fake-missing-tagger::
  81        Some old repositories have tags without a tagger.  The
  82        fast-import protocol was pretty strict about that, and did not
  83        allow that.  So fake a tagger to be able to fast-import the
  84        output.
  85
  86--use-done-feature::
  87        Start the stream with a 'feature done' stanza, and terminate
  88        it with a 'done' command.
  89
  90--no-data::
  91        Skip output of blob objects and instead refer to blobs via
  92        their original SHA-1 hash.  This is useful when rewriting the
  93        directory structure or history of a repository without
  94        touching the contents of individual files.  Note that the
  95        resulting stream can only be used by a repository which
  96        already contains the necessary objects.
  97
  98--full-tree::
  99        This option will cause fast-export to issue a "deleteall"
 100        directive for each commit followed by a full list of all files
 101        in the commit (as opposed to just listing the files which are
 102        different from the commit's first parent).
 103
 104[<git-rev-list-args>...]::
 105       A list of arguments, acceptable to 'git rev-parse' and
 106       'git rev-list', that specifies the specific objects and references
 107       to export.  For example, `master~10..master` causes the
 108       current master reference to be exported along with all objects
 109       added since its 10th ancestor commit.
 110
 111EXAMPLES
 112--------
 113
 114-------------------------------------------------------------------
 115$ git fast-export --all | (cd /empty/repository && git fast-import)
 116-------------------------------------------------------------------
 117
 118This will export the whole repository and import it into the existing
 119empty repository.  Except for reencoding commits that are not in
 120UTF-8, it would be a one-to-one mirror.
 121
 122-----------------------------------------------------
 123$ git fast-export master~5..master |
 124        sed "s|refs/heads/master|refs/heads/other|" |
 125        git fast-import
 126-----------------------------------------------------
 127
 128This makes a new branch called 'other' from 'master~5..master'
 129(i.e. if 'master' has linear history, it will take the last 5 commits).
 130
 131Note that this assumes that none of the blobs and commit messages
 132referenced by that revision range contains the string
 133'refs/heads/master'.
 134
 135
 136Limitations
 137-----------
 138
 139Since 'git fast-import' cannot tag trees, you will not be
 140able to export the linux-2.6.git repository completely, as it contains
 141a tag referencing a tree instead of a commit.
 142
 143GIT
 144---
 145Part of the linkgit:git[1] suite