1git-checkout-index(1) 2===================== 3 4NAME 5---- 6git-checkout-index - Copy files from the index to the working directory 7 8 9SYNOPSIS 10-------- 11[verse] 12'git-checkout-index' [-u] [-q] [-a] [-f] [-n] [--prefix=<string>] 13 [--stage=<number>] 14 [-z] [--stdin] 15 [--] [<file>]\* 16 17DESCRIPTION 18----------- 19Will copy all files listed from the index to the working directory 20(not overwriting existing files). 21 22OPTIONS 23------- 24-u|--index:: 25 update stat information for the checked out entries in 26 the index file. 27 28-q|--quiet:: 29 be quiet if files exist or are not in the index 30 31-f|--force:: 32 forces overwrite of existing files 33 34-a|--all:: 35 checks out all files in the index. Cannot be used 36 together with explicit filenames. 37 38-n|--no-create:: 39 Don't checkout new files, only refresh files already checked 40 out. 41 42--prefix=<string>:: 43 When creating files, prepend <string> (usually a directory 44 including a trailing /) 45 46--stage=<number>:: 47 Instead of checking out unmerged entries, copy out the 48 files from named stage. <number> must be between 1 and 3. 49 50--stdin:: 51 Instead of taking list of paths from the command line, 52 read list of paths from the standard input. Paths are 53 separated by LF (i.e. one path per line) by default. 54 55-z:: 56 Only meaningful with `--stdin`; paths are separated with 57 NUL character instead of LF. 58 59--:: 60 Do not interpret any more arguments as options. 61 62The order of the flags used to matter, but not anymore. 63 64Just doing `git-checkout-index` does nothing. You probably meant 65`git-checkout-index -a`. And if you want to force it, you want 66`git-checkout-index -f -a`. 67 68Intuitiveness is not the goal here. Repeatability is. The reason for 69the "no arguments means no work" behavior is that from scripts you are 70supposed to be able to do: 71 72---------------- 73$ find . -name '*.h' -print0 | xargs -0 git-checkout-index -f -- 74---------------- 75 76which will force all existing `*.h` files to be replaced with their 77cached copies. If an empty command line implied "all", then this would 78force-refresh everything in the index, which was not the point. But 79since git-checkout-index accepts --stdin it would be faster to use: 80 81---------------- 82$ find . -name '*.h' -print0 | git-checkout-index -f -z --stdin 83---------------- 84 85The `--` is just a good idea when you know the rest will be filenames; 86it will prevent problems with a filename of, for example, `-a`. 87Using `--` is probably a good policy in scripts. 88 89 90EXAMPLES 91-------- 92To update and refresh only the files already checked out:: 93+ 94---------------- 95$ git-checkout-index -n -f -a && git-update-index --ignore-missing --refresh 96---------------- 97 98Using `git-checkout-index` to "export an entire tree":: 99 The prefix ability basically makes it trivial to use 100 `git-checkout-index` as an "export as tree" function. 101 Just read the desired tree into the index, and do: 102+ 103---------------- 104$ git-checkout-index --prefix=git-export-dir/ -a 105---------------- 106+ 107`git-checkout-index` will "export" the index into the specified 108directory. 109+ 110The final "/" is important. The exported name is literally just 111prefixed with the specified string. Contrast this with the 112following example. 113 114Export files with a prefix:: 115+ 116---------------- 117$ git-checkout-index --prefix=.merged- Makefile 118---------------- 119+ 120This will check out the currently cached copy of `Makefile` 121into the file `.merged-Makefile`. 122 123 124Author 125------ 126Written by Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org> 127 128 129Documentation 130-------------- 131Documentation by David Greaves, 132Junio C Hamano and the git-list <git@vger.kernel.org>. 133 134 135GIT 136--- 137Part of the gitlink:git[7] suite 138