have been completed, or to save the marks table across
incremental runs. As <file> is only opened and truncated
at completion, the same path can also be safely given to
- \--import-marks.
+ --import-marks.
The file will not be written if no new object has been
marked/exported.
--import-marks=<file>::
Before processing any input, load the marks specified in
<file>. The input file must exist, must be readable, and
- must use the same format as produced by \--export-marks.
+ must use the same format as produced by --export-marks.
+
Any commits that have already been marked will not be exported again.
-If the backend uses a similar \--import-marks file, this allows for
+If the backend uses a similar --import-marks file, this allows for
incremental bidirectional exporting of the repository by keeping the
marks the same across runs.
in the commit (as opposed to just listing the files which are
different from the commit's first parent).
+--anonymize::
+ Anonymize the contents of the repository while still retaining
+ the shape of the history and stored tree. See the section on
+ `ANONYMIZING` below.
+
--refspec::
Apply the specified refspec to each ref exported. Multiple of them can
be specified.
'refs/heads/master'.
+ANONYMIZING
+-----------
+
+If the `--anonymize` option is given, git will attempt to remove all
+identifying information from the repository while still retaining enough
+of the original tree and history patterns to reproduce some bugs. The
+goal is that a git bug which is found on a private repository will
+persist in the anonymized repository, and the latter can be shared with
+git developers to help solve the bug.
+
+With this option, git will replace all refnames, paths, blob contents,
+commit and tag messages, names, and email addresses in the output with
+anonymized data. Two instances of the same string will be replaced
+equivalently (e.g., two commits with the same author will have the same
+anonymized author in the output, but bear no resemblance to the original
+author string). The relationship between commits, branches, and tags is
+retained, as well as the commit timestamps (but the commit messages and
+refnames bear no resemblance to the originals). The relative makeup of
+the tree is retained (e.g., if you have a root tree with 10 files and 3
+trees, so will the output), but their names and the contents of the
+files will be replaced.
+
+If you think you have found a git bug, you can start by exporting an
+anonymized stream of the whole repository:
+
+---------------------------------------------------
+$ git fast-export --anonymize --all >anon-stream
+---------------------------------------------------
+
+Then confirm that the bug persists in a repository created from that
+stream (many bugs will not, as they really do depend on the exact
+repository contents):
+
+---------------------------------------------------
+$ git init anon-repo
+$ cd anon-repo
+$ git fast-import <../anon-stream
+$ ... test your bug ...
+---------------------------------------------------
+
+If the anonymized repository shows the bug, it may be worth sharing
+`anon-stream` along with a regular bug report. Note that the anonymized
+stream compresses very well, so gzipping it is encouraged. If you want
+to examine the stream to see that it does not contain any private data,
+you can peruse it directly before sending. You may also want to try:
+
+---------------------------------------------------
+$ perl -pe 's/\d+/X/g' <anon-stream | sort -u | less
+---------------------------------------------------
+
+which shows all of the unique lines (with numbers converted to "X", to
+collapse "User 0", "User 1", etc into "User X"). This produces a much
+smaller output, and it is usually easy to quickly confirm that there is
+no private data in the stream.
+
+
Limitations
-----------
able to export the linux.git repository completely, as it contains
a tag referencing a tree instead of a commit.
+SEE ALSO
+--------
+linkgit:git-fast-import[1]
+
GIT
---
Part of the linkgit:git[1] suite