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 (will then continue to 33 process listed files). 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 46Note that the order of the flags matters: 47 48 git-checkout-index -a -f file.c 49 50will first check out all files listed in the cache (but not overwrite 51any old ones), and then force-checkout `file.c` a second time (ie that 52one *will* overwrite any old contents with the same filename). 53 54Also, just doing "git-checkout-index" does nothing. You probably meant 55"git-checkout-index -a". And if you want to force it, you want 56"git-checkout-index -f -a". 57 58Intuitiveness is not the goal here. Repeatability is. The reason for 59the "no arguments means no work" thing is that from scripts you are 60supposed to be able to do things like: 61 62 find . -name '*.h' -print0 | xargs -0 git-checkout-index -f -- 63 64which will force all existing `*.h` files to be replaced with their 65cached copies. If an empty command line implied "all", then this would 66force-refresh everything in the cache, which was not the point. 67 68To update and refresh only the files already checked out: 69 70 git-checkout-index -n -f -a && git-update-index --ignore-missing --refresh 71 72Oh, and the "--" is just a good idea when you know the rest will be 73filenames. Just so that you wouldn't have a filename of "-a" causing 74problems (not possible in the above example, but get used to it in 75scripting!). 76 77The prefix ability basically makes it trivial to use 78git-checkout-index as an "export as tree" function. Just read the 79desired tree into the index, and do a 80 81 git-checkout-index --prefix=git-export-dir/ -a 82 83and git-checkout-index will "export" the cache into the specified 84directory. 85 86NOTE The final "/" is important. The exported name is literally just 87prefixed with the specified string, so you can also do something like 88 89 git-checkout-index --prefix=.merged- Makefile 90 91to check out the currently cached copy of `Makefile` into the file 92`.merged-Makefile` 93 94Author 95------ 96Written by Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org> 97 98Documentation 99-------------- 100Documentation by David Greaves, Junio C Hamano and the git-list <git@vger.kernel.org>. 101 102GIT 103--- 104Part of the gitlink:git[7] suite 105