SYNOPSIS
--------
-'git mailinfo' [-k] [-u | --encoding=<encoding> | -n] <msg> <patch>
+[verse]
+'git mailinfo' [-k|-b] [-u | --encoding=<encoding> | -n] [--scissors] <msg> <patch>
DESCRIPTION
-----------
-Reading a single e-mail message from the standard input, and
+Reads a single e-mail message from the standard input, and
writes the commit log message in <msg> file, and the patches in
<patch> file. The author name, e-mail and e-mail subject are
-written out to the standard output to be used by 'git-am'
+written out to the standard output to be used by 'git am'
to create a commit. It is usually not necessary to use this
command directly. See linkgit:git-am[1] instead.
OPTIONS
-------
-k::
- Usually the program 'cleans up' the Subject: header line
- to extract the title line for the commit log message,
- among which (1) remove 'Re:' or 're:', (2) leading
- whitespaces, (3) '[' up to ']', typically '[PATCH]', and
- then prepends "[PATCH] ". This flag forbids this
- munging, and is most useful when used to read back
- 'git-format-patch -k' output.
+ Usually the program removes email cruft from the Subject:
+ header line to extract the title line for the commit log
+ message. This option prevents this munging, and is most
+ useful when used to read back 'git format-patch -k' output.
++
+Specifically, the following are removed until none of them remain:
++
+--
+* Leading and trailing whitespace.
+
+* Leading `Re:`, `re:`, and `:`.
+
+* Leading bracketed strings (between `[` and `]`, usually
+ `[PATCH]`).
+--
++
+Finally, runs of whitespace are normalized to a single ASCII space
+character.
+
+-b::
+ When -k is not in effect, all leading strings bracketed with '['
+ and ']' pairs are stripped. This option limits the stripping to
+ only the pairs whose bracketed string contains the word "PATCH".
-u::
The commit log message, author name and author email are
taken from the e-mail, and after minimally decoding MIME
- transfer encoding, re-coded in UTF-8 by transliterating
+ transfer encoding, re-coded in the charset specified by
+ i18n.commitencoding (defaulting to UTF-8) by transliterating
them. This used to be optional but now it is the default.
+
Note that the patch is always used as-is without charset
conversion, even with this flag.
--encoding=<encoding>::
- Similar to -u but if the local convention is different
- from what is specified by i18n.commitencoding, this flag
- can be used to override it.
+ Similar to -u. But when re-coding, the charset specified here is
+ used instead of the one specified by i18n.commitencoding or UTF-8.
-n::
Disable all charset re-coding of the metadata.
+--scissors::
+ Remove everything in body before a scissors line. A line that
+ mainly consists of scissors (either ">8" or "8<") and perforation
+ (dash "-") marks is called a scissors line, and is used to request
+ the reader to cut the message at that line. If such a line
+ appears in the body of the message before the patch, everything
+ before it (including the scissors line itself) is ignored when
+ this option is used.
++
+This is useful if you want to begin your message in a discussion thread
+with comments and suggestions on the message you are responding to, and to
+conclude it with a patch submission, separating the discussion and the
+beginning of the proposed commit log message with a scissors line.
++
+This can enabled by default with the configuration option mailinfo.scissors.
+
+--no-scissors::
+ Ignore scissors lines. Useful for overriding mailinfo.scissors settings.
+
<msg>::
The commit log message extracted from e-mail, usually
except the title line which comes from e-mail Subject.
<patch>::
The patch extracted from e-mail.
-
-Author
-------
-Written by Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org> and
-Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
-
-
-Documentation
---------------
-Documentation by Junio C Hamano and the git-list <git@vger.kernel.org>.
-
GIT
---
Part of the linkgit:git[1] suite