Documentation / git-fast-export.txton commit Fourth batch for 2.1 (786a89d)
   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|warn-strip|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 silently
  37be made unsigned, with 'warn-strip' they will be made unsigned but a
  38warning will be displayed, with 'verbatim', they will be silently
  39exported and with 'warn', they will be exported, but you will see a
  40warning.
  41
  42--tag-of-filtered-object=(abort|drop|rewrite)::
  43        Specify how to handle tags whose tagged object is filtered out.
  44        Since revisions and files to export can be limited by path,
  45        tagged objects may be filtered completely.
  46+
  47When asking to 'abort' (which is the default), this program will die
  48when encountering such a tag.  With 'drop' it will omit such tags from
  49the output.  With 'rewrite', if the tagged object is a commit, it will
  50rewrite the tag to tag an ancestor commit (via parent rewriting; see
  51linkgit:git-rev-list[1])
  52
  53-M::
  54-C::
  55        Perform move and/or copy detection, as described in the
  56        linkgit:git-diff[1] manual page, and use it to generate
  57        rename and copy commands in the output dump.
  58+
  59Note that earlier versions of this command did not complain and
  60produced incorrect results if you gave these options.
  61
  62--export-marks=<file>::
  63        Dumps the internal marks table to <file> when complete.
  64        Marks are written one per line as `:markid SHA-1`. Only marks
  65        for revisions are dumped; marks for blobs are ignored.
  66        Backends can use this file to validate imports after they
  67        have been completed, or to save the marks table across
  68        incremental runs.  As <file> is only opened and truncated
  69        at completion, the same path can also be safely given to
  70        \--import-marks.
  71        The file will not be written if no new object has been
  72        marked/exported.
  73
  74--import-marks=<file>::
  75        Before processing any input, load the marks specified in
  76        <file>.  The input file must exist, must be readable, and
  77        must use the same format as produced by \--export-marks.
  78+
  79Any commits that have already been marked will not be exported again.
  80If the backend uses a similar \--import-marks file, this allows for
  81incremental bidirectional exporting of the repository by keeping the
  82marks the same across runs.
  83
  84--fake-missing-tagger::
  85        Some old repositories have tags without a tagger.  The
  86        fast-import protocol was pretty strict about that, and did not
  87        allow that.  So fake a tagger to be able to fast-import the
  88        output.
  89
  90--use-done-feature::
  91        Start the stream with a 'feature done' stanza, and terminate
  92        it with a 'done' command.
  93
  94--no-data::
  95        Skip output of blob objects and instead refer to blobs via
  96        their original SHA-1 hash.  This is useful when rewriting the
  97        directory structure or history of a repository without
  98        touching the contents of individual files.  Note that the
  99        resulting stream can only be used by a repository which
 100        already contains the necessary objects.
 101
 102--full-tree::
 103        This option will cause fast-export to issue a "deleteall"
 104        directive for each commit followed by a full list of all files
 105        in the commit (as opposed to just listing the files which are
 106        different from the commit's first parent).
 107
 108--refspec::
 109        Apply the specified refspec to each ref exported. Multiple of them can
 110        be specified.
 111
 112[<git-rev-list-args>...]::
 113        A list of arguments, acceptable to 'git rev-parse' and
 114        'git rev-list', that specifies the specific objects and references
 115        to export.  For example, `master~10..master` causes the
 116        current master reference to be exported along with all objects
 117        added since its 10th ancestor commit.
 118
 119EXAMPLES
 120--------
 121
 122-------------------------------------------------------------------
 123$ git fast-export --all | (cd /empty/repository && git fast-import)
 124-------------------------------------------------------------------
 125
 126This will export the whole repository and import it into the existing
 127empty repository.  Except for reencoding commits that are not in
 128UTF-8, it would be a one-to-one mirror.
 129
 130-----------------------------------------------------
 131$ git fast-export master~5..master |
 132        sed "s|refs/heads/master|refs/heads/other|" |
 133        git fast-import
 134-----------------------------------------------------
 135
 136This makes a new branch called 'other' from 'master~5..master'
 137(i.e. if 'master' has linear history, it will take the last 5 commits).
 138
 139Note that this assumes that none of the blobs and commit messages
 140referenced by that revision range contains the string
 141'refs/heads/master'.
 142
 143
 144Limitations
 145-----------
 146
 147Since 'git fast-import' cannot tag trees, you will not be
 148able to export the linux.git repository completely, as it contains
 149a tag referencing a tree instead of a commit.
 150
 151GIT
 152---
 153Part of the linkgit:git[1] suite