1git-checkout-index(1) 2===================== 3 4NAME 5---- 6git-checkout-index - Copy files from the cache to the working directory 7 8 9SYNOPSIS 10-------- 11'git-checkout-index' [-u] [-q] [-a] [-f] [-n] [--prefix=<string>] 12 [--] <file>... 13 14DESCRIPTION 15----------- 16Will copy all files listed from the cache to the working directory 17(not overwriting existing files). 18 19OPTIONS 20------- 21-u:: 22 update stat information for the checked out entries in 23 the cache file. 24 25-q:: 26 be quiet if files exist or are not in the cache 27 28-f:: 29 forces overwrite of existing files 30 31-a:: 32 checks out all files in the cache. Cannot be used 33 together with explicit filenames. 34 35-n:: 36 Don't checkout new files, only refresh files already checked 37 out. 38 39--prefix=<string>:: 40 When creating files, prepend <string> (usually a directory 41 including a trailing /) 42 43--:: 44 Do not interpret any more arguments as options. 45 46The order of the flags used to matter, but not anymore. 47 48Just doing "git-checkout-index" does nothing. You probably meant 49"git-checkout-index -a". And if you want to force it, you want 50"git-checkout-index -f -a". 51 52Intuitiveness is not the goal here. Repeatability is. The reason for 53the "no arguments means no work" thing is that from scripts you are 54supposed to be able to do things like: 55 56 find . -name '*.h' -print0 | xargs -0 git-checkout-index -f -- 57 58which will force all existing `*.h` files to be replaced with their 59cached copies. If an empty command line implied "all", then this would 60force-refresh everything in the cache, which was not the point. 61 62To update and refresh only the files already checked out: 63 64 git-checkout-index -n -f -a && git-update-index --ignore-missing --refresh 65 66Oh, and the "--" is just a good idea when you know the rest will be 67filenames. Just so that you wouldn't have a filename of "-a" causing 68problems (not possible in the above example, but get used to it in 69scripting!). 70 71The prefix ability basically makes it trivial to use 72git-checkout-index as an "export as tree" function. Just read the 73desired tree into the index, and do a 74 75 git-checkout-index --prefix=git-export-dir/ -a 76 77and git-checkout-index will "export" the cache into the specified 78directory. 79 80NOTE The final "/" is important. The exported name is literally just 81prefixed with the specified string, so you can also do something like 82 83 git-checkout-index --prefix=.merged- Makefile 84 85to check out the currently cached copy of `Makefile` into the file 86`.merged-Makefile` 87 88Author 89------ 90Written by Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org> 91 92Documentation 93-------------- 94Documentation by David Greaves, Junio C Hamano and the git-list <git@vger.kernel.org>. 95 96GIT 97--- 98Part of the gitlink:git[7] suite 99