1git-checkout-cache(1) 2===================== 3v0.1, May 2005 4 5NAME 6---- 7git-checkout-cache - Copy files from the cache to the working directory 8 9 10SYNOPSIS 11-------- 12'git-checkout-cache' [-u] [-q] [-a] [-f] [-n] [--prefix=<string>] 13 [--] <file>... 14 15DESCRIPTION 16----------- 17Will copy all files listed from the cache to the working directory 18(not overwriting existing files). 19 20OPTIONS 21------- 22-u:: 23 update stat information for the checked out entries in 24 the cache file. 25 26-q:: 27 be quiet if files exist or are not in the cache 28 29-f:: 30 forces overwrite of existing files 31 32-a:: 33 checks out all files in the cache (will then continue to 34 process listed files). 35 36-n:: 37 Don't checkout new files, only refresh files already checked 38 out. 39 40--prefix=<string>:: 41 When creating files, prepend <string> (usually a directory 42 including a trailing /) 43 44--:: 45 Do not interpret any more arguments as options. 46 47Note that the order of the flags matters: 48 49 git-checkout-cache -a -f file.c 50 51will first check out all files listed in the cache (but not overwrite 52any old ones), and then force-checkout `file.c` a second time (ie that 53one *will* overwrite any old contents with the same filename). 54 55Also, just doing "git-checkout-cache" does nothing. You probably meant 56"git-checkout-cache -a". And if you want to force it, you want 57"git-checkout-cache -f -a". 58 59Intuitiveness is not the goal here. Repeatability is. The reason for 60the "no arguments means no work" thing is that from scripts you are 61supposed to be able to do things like: 62 63 find . -name '*.h' -print0 | xargs -0 git-checkout-cache -f -- 64 65which will force all existing `*.h` files to be replaced with their 66cached copies. If an empty command line implied "all", then this would 67force-refresh everything in the cache, which was not the point. 68 69To update and refresh only the files already checked out: 70 71 git-checkout-cache -n -f -a && git-update-cache --ignore-missing --refresh 72 73Oh, and the "--" is just a good idea when you know the rest will be 74filenames. Just so that you wouldn't have a filename of "-a" causing 75problems (not possible in the above example, but get used to it in 76scripting!). 77 78The prefix ability basically makes it trivial to use 79git-checkout-cache as an "export as tree" function. Just read the 80desired tree into the index, and do a 81 82 git-checkout-cache --prefix=git-export-dir/ -a 83 84and git-checkout-cache will "export" the cache into the specified 85directory. 86 87NOTE The final "/" is important. The exported name is literally just 88prefixed with the specified string, so you can also do something like 89 90 git-checkout-cache --prefix=.merged- Makefile 91 92to check out the currently cached copy of `Makefile` into the file 93`.merged-Makefile` 94 95Author 96------ 97Written by Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org> 98 99Documentation 100-------------- 101Documentation by David Greaves, Junio C Hamano and the git-list <git@vger.kernel.org>. 102 103GIT 104--- 105Part of the link:git.html[git] suite 106