1git-checkout-index(1) 2===================== 3 4NAME 5---- 6git-checkout-index - Copy files from the index to the working tree 7 8 9SYNOPSIS 10-------- 11[verse] 12'git checkout-index' [-u] [-q] [-a] [-f] [-n] [--prefix=<string>] 13 [--stage=<number>|all] 14 [--temp] 15 [-z] [--stdin] 16 [--] [<file>...] 17 18DESCRIPTION 19----------- 20Will copy all files listed from the index to the working directory 21(not overwriting existing files). 22 23OPTIONS 24------- 25-u:: 26--index:: 27 update stat information for the checked out entries in 28 the index file. 29 30-q:: 31--quiet:: 32 be quiet if files exist or are not in the index 33 34-f:: 35--force:: 36 forces overwrite of existing files 37 38-a:: 39--all:: 40 checks out all files in the index. Cannot be used 41 together with explicit filenames. 42 43-n:: 44--no-create:: 45 Don't checkout new files, only refresh files already checked 46 out. 47 48--prefix=<string>:: 49 When creating files, prepend <string> (usually a directory 50 including a trailing /) 51 52--stage=<number>|all:: 53 Instead of checking out unmerged entries, copy out the 54 files from named stage. <number> must be between 1 and 3. 55 Note: --stage=all automatically implies --temp. 56 57--temp:: 58 Instead of copying the files to the working directory 59 write the content to temporary files. The temporary name 60 associations will be written to stdout. 61 62--stdin:: 63 Instead of taking list of paths from the command line, 64 read list of paths from the standard input. Paths are 65 separated by LF (i.e. one path per line) by default. 66 67-z:: 68 Only meaningful with `--stdin`; paths are separated with 69 NUL character instead of LF. 70 71\--:: 72 Do not interpret any more arguments as options. 73 74The order of the flags used to matter, but not anymore. 75 76Just doing `git checkout-index` does nothing. You probably meant 77`git checkout-index -a`. And if you want to force it, you want 78`git checkout-index -f -a`. 79 80Intuitiveness is not the goal here. Repeatability is. The reason for 81the "no arguments means no work" behavior is that from scripts you are 82supposed to be able to do: 83 84---------------- 85$ find . -name '*.h' -print0 | xargs -0 git checkout-index -f -- 86---------------- 87 88which will force all existing `*.h` files to be replaced with their 89cached copies. If an empty command line implied "all", then this would 90force-refresh everything in the index, which was not the point. But 91since 'git checkout-index' accepts --stdin it would be faster to use: 92 93---------------- 94$ find . -name '*.h' -print0 | git checkout-index -f -z --stdin 95---------------- 96 97The `--` is just a good idea when you know the rest will be filenames; 98it will prevent problems with a filename of, for example, `-a`. 99Using `--` is probably a good policy in scripts. 100 101 102Using --temp or --stage=all 103--------------------------- 104When `--temp` is used (or implied by `--stage=all`) 105'git checkout-index' will create a temporary file for each index 106entry being checked out. The index will not be updated with stat 107information. These options can be useful if the caller needs all 108stages of all unmerged entries so that the unmerged files can be 109processed by an external merge tool. 110 111A listing will be written to stdout providing the association of 112temporary file names to tracked path names. The listing format 113has two variations: 114 115 . tempname TAB path RS 116+ 117The first format is what gets used when `--stage` is omitted or 118is not `--stage=all`. The field tempname is the temporary file 119name holding the file content and path is the tracked path name in 120the index. Only the requested entries are output. 121 122 . stage1temp SP stage2temp SP stage3tmp TAB path RS 123+ 124The second format is what gets used when `--stage=all`. The three 125stage temporary fields (stage1temp, stage2temp, stage3temp) list the 126name of the temporary file if there is a stage entry in the index 127or `.` if there is no stage entry. Paths which only have a stage 0 128entry will always be omitted from the output. 129 130In both formats RS (the record separator) is newline by default 131but will be the null byte if -z was passed on the command line. 132The temporary file names are always safe strings; they will never 133contain directory separators or whitespace characters. The path 134field is always relative to the current directory and the temporary 135file names are always relative to the top level directory. 136 137If the object being copied out to a temporary file is a symbolic 138link the content of the link will be written to a normal file. It is 139up to the end-user or the Porcelain to make use of this information. 140 141 142EXAMPLES 143-------- 144To update and refresh only the files already checked out:: 145+ 146---------------- 147$ git checkout-index -n -f -a && git update-index --ignore-missing --refresh 148---------------- 149 150Using 'git checkout-index' to "export an entire tree":: 151 The prefix ability basically makes it trivial to use 152 'git checkout-index' as an "export as tree" function. 153 Just read the desired tree into the index, and do: 154+ 155---------------- 156$ git checkout-index --prefix=git-export-dir/ -a 157---------------- 158+ 159`git checkout-index` will "export" the index into the specified 160directory. 161+ 162The final "/" is important. The exported name is literally just 163prefixed with the specified string. Contrast this with the 164following example. 165 166Export files with a prefix:: 167+ 168---------------- 169$ git checkout-index --prefix=.merged- Makefile 170---------------- 171+ 172This will check out the currently cached copy of `Makefile` 173into the file `.merged-Makefile`. 174 175 176Author 177------ 178Written by Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org> 179 180 181Documentation 182-------------- 183Documentation by David Greaves, 184Junio C Hamano and the git-list <git@vger.kernel.org>. 185 186 187GIT 188--- 189Part of the linkgit:git[1] suite