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GIT-FORMAT-PATCH(1) | Git Manual | GIT-FORMAT-PATCH(1) |
NAME¶
git-format-patch - Prepare patches for e-mail submissionSYNOPSIS¶
git format-patch [-k] [(-o|--output-directory) <dir> | --stdout] [--no-thread | --thread[=<style>]] [(--attach|--inline)[=<boundary>] | --no-attach] [-s | --signoff] [--signature=<signature> | --no-signature] [--signature-file=<file>] [-n | --numbered | -N | --no-numbered] [--start-number <n>] [--numbered-files] [--in-reply-to=Message-Id] [--suffix=.<sfx>] [--ignore-if-in-upstream] [--rfc] [--subject-prefix=Subject-Prefix] [(--reroll-count|-v) <n>] [--to=<email>] [--cc=<email>] [--[no-]cover-letter] [--quiet] [--notes[=<ref>]] [<common diff options>] [ <since> | <revision range> ]
DESCRIPTION¶
Prepare each commit with its patch in one file per commit, formatted to resemble UNIX mailbox format. The output of this command is convenient for e-mail submission or for use with git am. There are two ways to specify which commits to operate on. 1.A single commit, <since>, specifies that the
commits leading to the tip of the current branch that are not in the history
that leads to the <since> to be output.
2.Generic <revision range> expression (see
"SPECIFYING REVISIONS" section in gitrevisions(7)) means the
commits in the specified range.
The first rule takes precedence in the case of a single <commit>. To apply
the second rule, i.e., format everything since the beginning of history up
until <commit>, use the --root option: git format-patch --root
<commit>. If you want to format only <commit> itself, you can
do this with git format-patch -1 <commit>.
By default, each output file is numbered sequentially from 1, and uses the first
line of the commit message (massaged for pathname safety) as the filename.
With the --numbered-files option, the output file names will only be
numbers, without the first line of the commit appended. The names of the
output files are printed to standard output, unless the --stdout option
is specified.
If -o is specified, output files are created in <dir>. Otherwise
they are created in the current working directory. The default path can be set
with the format.outputDirectory configuration option. The -o
option takes precedence over format.outputDirectory. To store patches
in the current working directory even when format.outputDirectory
points elsewhere, use -o ..
By default, the subject of a single patch is "[PATCH] " followed by
the concatenation of lines from the commit message up to the first blank line
(see the DISCUSSION section of git-commit(1)).
When multiple patches are output, the subject prefix will instead be
"[PATCH n/m] ". To force 1/1 to be added for a single patch, use
-n. To omit patch numbers from the subject, use -N.
If given --thread, git-format-patch will generate
In-Reply-To and References headers to make the second and
subsequent patch mails appear as replies to the first mail; this also
generates a Message-Id header to reference.
OPTIONS¶
-p, --no-statGenerate plain patches without any diffstats.
-U<n>, --unified=<n>
Generate diffs with <n> lines of context instead of
the usual three.
--indent-heuristic, --no-indent-heuristic, --compaction-heuristic,
--no-compaction-heuristic
These are to help debugging and tuning experimental
heuristics (which are off by default) that shift diff hunk boundaries to make
patches easier to read.
--minimal
Spend extra time to make sure the smallest possible diff
is produced.
--patience
Generate a diff using the "patience diff"
algorithm.
--histogram
Generate a diff using the "histogram diff"
algorithm.
--diff-algorithm={patience|minimal|histogram|myers}
Choose a diff algorithm. The variants are as follows:
default, myers
--stat[=<width>[,<name-width>[,<count>]]]
The basic greedy diff algorithm. Currently, this is the
default.
minimal
Spend extra time to make sure the smallest possible diff
is produced.
patience
Use "patience diff" algorithm when generating
patches.
histogram
This algorithm extends the patience algorithm to
"support low-occurrence common elements".
For instance, if you configured diff.algorithm variable to a non-default value
and want to use the default one, then you have to use
--diff-algorithm=default option.Generate a diffstat. By default, as much space as
necessary will be used for the filename part, and the rest for the graph part.
Maximum width defaults to terminal width, or 80 columns if not connected to a
terminal, and can be overridden by <width>. The width of the
filename part can be limited by giving another width <name-width>
after a comma. The width of the graph part can be limited by using
--stat-graph-width=<width> (affects all commands generating a
stat graph) or by setting diff.statGraphWidth=<width> (does not
affect git format-patch). By giving a third parameter
<count>, you can limit the output to the first
<count> lines, followed by ... if there are more.
These parameters can also be set individually with
--stat-width=<width>, --stat-name-width=<name-width>
and --stat-count=<count>.
--numstat
Similar to --stat, but shows number of added and
deleted lines in decimal notation and pathname without abbreviation, to make
it more machine friendly. For binary files, outputs two - instead of
saying 0 0.
--shortstat
Output only the last line of the --stat format
containing total number of modified files, as well as number of added and
deleted lines.
--dirstat[=<param1,param2,...>]
Output the distribution of relative amount of changes for
each sub-directory. The behavior of --dirstat can be customized by
passing it a comma separated list of parameters. The defaults are controlled
by the diff.dirstat configuration variable (see git-config(1)).
The following parameters are available:
changes
--summary
Compute the dirstat numbers by counting the lines that
have been removed from the source, or added to the destination. This ignores
the amount of pure code movements within a file. In other words, rearranging
lines in a file is not counted as much as other changes. This is the default
behavior when no parameter is given.
lines
Compute the dirstat numbers by doing the regular
line-based diff analysis, and summing the removed/added line counts. (For
binary files, count 64-byte chunks instead, since binary files have no natural
concept of lines). This is a more expensive --dirstat behavior than the
changes behavior, but it does count rearranged lines within a file as
much as other changes. The resulting output is consistent with what you get
from the other --*stat options.
files
Compute the dirstat numbers by counting the number of
files changed. Each changed file counts equally in the dirstat analysis. This
is the computationally cheapest --dirstat behavior, since it does not
have to look at the file contents at all.
cumulative
Count changes in a child directory for the parent
directory as well. Note that when using cumulative, the sum of the
percentages reported may exceed 100%. The default (non-cumulative) behavior
can be specified with the noncumulative parameter.
<limit>
An integer parameter specifies a cut-off percent (3% by
default). Directories contributing less than this percentage of the changes
are not shown in the output.
Example: The following will count changed files, while ignoring directories with
less than 10% of the total amount of changed files, and accumulating child
directory counts in the parent directories:
--dirstat=files,10,cumulative.Output a condensed summary of extended header information
such as creations, renames and mode changes.
--no-renames
Turn off rename detection, even when the configuration
file gives the default to do so.
--full-index
Instead of the first handful of characters, show the full
pre- and post-image blob object names on the "index" line when
generating patch format output.
--binary
In addition to --full-index, output a binary diff
that can be applied with git-apply.
--abbrev[=<n>]
Instead of showing the full 40-byte hexadecimal object
name in diff-raw format output and diff-tree header lines, show only a partial
prefix. This is independent of the --full-index option above, which
controls the diff-patch output format. Non default number of digits can be
specified with --abbrev=<n>.
-B[<n>][/<m>], --break-rewrites[=[<n>][/<m>]]
Break complete rewrite changes into pairs of delete and
create. This serves two purposes:
It affects the way a change that amounts to a total rewrite of a file not as a
series of deletion and insertion mixed together with a very few lines that
happen to match textually as the context, but as a single deletion of
everything old followed by a single insertion of everything new, and the
number m controls this aspect of the -B option (defaults to 60%).
-B/70% specifies that less than 30% of the original should remain in
the result for Git to consider it a total rewrite (i.e. otherwise the
resulting patch will be a series of deletion and insertion mixed together with
context lines).
When used with -M, a totally-rewritten file is also considered as the source of
a rename (usually -M only considers a file that disappeared as the source of a
rename), and the number n controls this aspect of the -B option
(defaults to 50%). -B20% specifies that a change with addition and
deletion compared to 20% or more of the file’s size are eligible for
being picked up as a possible source of a rename to another file.
-M[<n>], --find-renames[=<n>]
Detect renames. If n is specified, it is a
threshold on the similarity index (i.e. amount of addition/deletions compared
to the file’s size). For example, -M90% means Git should
consider a delete/add pair to be a rename if more than 90% of the file
hasn’t changed. Without a % sign, the number is to be read as a
fraction, with a decimal point before it. I.e., -M5 becomes 0.5, and is
thus the same as -M50%. Similarly, -M05 is the same as
-M5%. To limit detection to exact renames, use -M100%. The
default similarity index is 50%.
-C[<n>], --find-copies[=<n>]
Detect copies as well as renames. See also
--find-copies-harder. If n is specified, it has the same meaning
as for -M<n>.
--find-copies-harder
For performance reasons, by default, -C option
finds copies only if the original file of the copy was modified in the same
changeset. This flag makes the command inspect unmodified files as candidates
for the source of copy. This is a very expensive operation for large projects,
so use it with caution. Giving more than one -C option has the same
effect.
-D, --irreversible-delete
Omit the preimage for deletes, i.e. print only the header
but not the diff between the preimage and /dev/null. The resulting
patch is not meant to be applied with patch or git apply; this
is solely for people who want to just concentrate on reviewing the text after
the change. In addition, the output obviously lack enough information to apply
such a patch in reverse, even manually, hence the name of the option.
When used together with -B, omit also the preimage in the deletion part
of a delete/create pair.
-l<num>
The -M and -C options require O(n^2)
processing time where n is the number of potential rename/copy targets. This
option prevents rename/copy detection from running if the number of
rename/copy targets exceeds the specified number.
-O<orderfile>
Output the patch in the order specified in the
<orderfile>, which has one shell glob pattern per line. This overrides
the diff.orderFile configuration variable (see git-config(1)).
To cancel diff.orderFile, use -O/dev/null.
-a, --text
Treat all files as text.
--ignore-space-at-eol
Ignore changes in whitespace at EOL.
-b, --ignore-space-change
Ignore changes in amount of whitespace. This ignores
whitespace at line end, and considers all other sequences of one or more
whitespace characters to be equivalent.
-w, --ignore-all-space
Ignore whitespace when comparing lines. This ignores
differences even if one line has whitespace where the other line has
none.
--ignore-blank-lines
Ignore changes whose lines are all blank.
--inter-hunk-context=<lines>
Show the context between diff hunks, up to the specified
number of lines, thereby fusing hunks that are close to each other.
-W, --function-context
Show whole surrounding functions of changes.
--ext-diff
Allow an external diff helper to be executed. If you set
an external diff driver with gitattributes(5), you need to use this
option with git-log(1) and friends.
--no-ext-diff
Disallow external diff drivers.
--textconv, --no-textconv
Allow (or disallow) external text conversion filters to
be run when comparing binary files. See gitattributes(5) for details.
Because textconv filters are typically a one-way conversion, the resulting
diff is suitable for human consumption, but cannot be applied. For this
reason, textconv filters are enabled by default only for git-diff(1)
and git-log(1), but not for git-format-patch(1) or diff plumbing
commands.
--ignore-submodules[=<when>]
Ignore changes to submodules in the diff generation.
<when> can be either "none", "untracked",
"dirty" or "all", which is the default. Using
"none" will consider the submodule modified when it either contains
untracked or modified files or its HEAD differs from the commit recorded in
the superproject and can be used to override any settings of the ignore
option in git-config(1) or gitmodules(5). When
"untracked" is used submodules are not considered dirty when they
only contain untracked content (but they are still scanned for modified
content). Using "dirty" ignores all changes to the work tree of
submodules, only changes to the commits stored in the superproject are shown
(this was the behavior until 1.7.0). Using "all" hides all changes
to submodules.
--src-prefix=<prefix>
Show the given source prefix instead of
"a/".
--dst-prefix=<prefix>
Show the given destination prefix instead of
"b/".
--no-prefix
Do not show any source or destination prefix.
--line-prefix=<prefix>
Prepend an additional prefix to every line of
output.
--ita-invisible-in-index
By default entries added by "git add -N" appear
as an existing empty file in "git diff" and a new file in "git
diff --cached". This option makes the entry appear as a new file in
"git diff" and non-existent in "git diff --cached". This
option could be reverted with --ita-visible-in-index. Both options are
experimental and could be removed in future.
For more detailed explanation on these common options, see also
gitdiffcore(7).
-<n>
Prepare patches from the topmost <n> commits.
-o <dir>, --output-directory <dir>
Use <dir> to store the resulting files, instead of
the current working directory.
-n, --numbered
Name output in [PATCH n/m] format, even with a
single patch.
-N, --no-numbered
Name output in [PATCH] format.
--start-number <n>
Start numbering the patches at <n> instead of
1.
--numbered-files
Output file names will be a simple number sequence
without the default first line of the commit appended.
-k, --keep-subject
Do not strip/add [PATCH] from the first line of
the commit log message.
-s, --signoff
Add Signed-off-by: line to the commit message,
using the committer identity of yourself. See the signoff option in
git-commit(1) for more information.
--stdout
Print all commits to the standard output in mbox format,
instead of creating a file for each one.
--attach[=<boundary>]
Create multipart/mixed attachment, the first part of
which is the commit message and the patch itself in the second part, with
Content-Disposition: attachment.
--no-attach
Disable the creation of an attachment, overriding the
configuration setting.
--inline[=<boundary>]
Create multipart/mixed attachment, the first part of
which is the commit message and the patch itself in the second part, with
Content-Disposition: inline.
--thread[=<style>], --no-thread
Controls addition of In-Reply-To and
References headers to make the second and subsequent mails appear as
replies to the first. Also controls generation of the Message-Id header
to reference.
The optional <style> argument can be either shallow or deep.
shallow threading makes every mail a reply to the head of the series,
where the head is chosen from the cover letter, the --in-reply-to, and
the first patch mail, in this order. deep threading makes every mail a
reply to the previous one.
The default is --no-thread, unless the format.thread configuration
is set. If --thread is specified without a style, it defaults to the
style specified by format.thread if any, or else shallow.
Beware that the default for git send-email is to thread emails itself. If
you want git format-patch to take care of threading, you will want to
ensure that threading is disabled for git send-email.
--in-reply-to=Message-Id
Make the first mail (or all the mails with
--no-thread) appear as a reply to the given Message-Id, which avoids
breaking threads to provide a new patch series.
--ignore-if-in-upstream
Do not include a patch that matches a commit in
<until>..<since>. This will examine all patches reachable from
<since> but not from <until> and compare them with the patches
being generated, and any patch that matches is ignored.
--subject-prefix=<Subject-Prefix>
Instead of the standard [PATCH] prefix in the
subject line, instead use [<Subject-Prefix>]. This allows for
useful naming of a patch series, and can be combined with the
--numbered option.
--rfc
Alias for --subject-prefix="RFC PATCH".
RFC means "Request For Comments"; use this when sending an
experimental patch for discussion rather than application.
-v <n>, --reroll-count=<n>
Mark the series as the <n>-th iteration of the
topic. The output filenames have v<n> prepended to them, and the
subject prefix ("PATCH" by default, but configurable via the
--subject-prefix option) has ` v<n>` appended to it. E.g.
--reroll-count=4 may produce v4-0001-add-makefile.patch file
that has "Subject: [PATCH v4 1/20] Add makefile" in it.
--to=<email>
Add a To: header to the email headers. This is in
addition to any configured headers, and may be used multiple times. The
negated form --no-to discards all To: headers added so far (from
config or command line).
--cc=<email>
Add a Cc: header to the email headers. This is in
addition to any configured headers, and may be used multiple times. The
negated form --no-cc discards all Cc: headers added so far (from
config or command line).
--from, --from=<ident>
Use ident in the From: header of each
commit email. If the author ident of the commit is not textually identical to
the provided ident, place a From: header in the body of the
message with the original author. If no ident is given, use the
committer ident.
Note that this option is only useful if you are actually sending the emails and
want to identify yourself as the sender, but retain the original author (and
git am will correctly pick up the in-body header). Note also that
git send-email already handles this transformation for you, and this
option should not be used if you are feeding the result to git
send-email.
--add-header=<header>
Add an arbitrary header to the email headers. This is in
addition to any configured headers, and may be used multiple times. For
example, --add-header="Organization: git-foo". The negated
form --no-add-header discards all ( To:, Cc:, and
custom) headers added so far from config or command line.
--[no-]cover-letter
In addition to the patches, generate a cover letter file
containing the branch description, shortlog and the overall diffstat. You can
fill in a description in the file before sending it out.
--notes[=<ref>]
Append the notes (see git-notes(1)) for the commit
after the three-dash line.
The expected use case of this is to write supporting explanation for the commit
that does not belong to the commit log message proper, and include it with the
patch submission. While one can simply write these explanations after
format-patch has run but before sending, keeping them as Git notes
allows them to be maintained between versions of the patch series (but see the
discussion of the notes.rewrite configuration options in
git-notes(1) to use this workflow).
--[no]-signature=<signature>
Add a signature to each message produced. Per RFC 3676
the signature is separated from the body by a line with '-- ' on it. If the
signature option is omitted the signature defaults to the Git version
number.
--signature-file=<file>
Works just like --signature except the signature is read
from a file.
--suffix=.<sfx>
Instead of using .patch as the suffix for
generated filenames, use specified suffix. A common alternative is
--suffix=.txt. Leaving this empty will remove the .patch suffix.
Note that the leading character does not have to be a dot; for example, you can
use --suffix=-patch to get
0001-description-of-my-change-patch.
-q, --quiet
Do not print the names of the generated files to standard
output.
--no-binary
Do not output contents of changes in binary files,
instead display a notice that those files changed. Patches generated using
this option cannot be applied properly, but they are still useful for code
review.
--zero-commit
Output an all-zero hash in each patch’s From
header instead of the hash of the commit.
--base=<commit>
Record the base tree information to identify the state
the patch series applies to. See the BASE TREE INFORMATION section below for
details.
--root
Treat the revision argument as a <revision range>,
even if it is just a single commit (that would normally be treated as a
<since>). Note that root commits included in the specified range are
always formatted as creation patches, independently of this flag.
CONFIGURATION¶
You can specify extra mail header lines to be added to each message, defaults for the subject prefix and file suffix, number patches when outputting more than one patch, add "To" or "Cc:" headers, configure attachments, and sign off patches with configuration variables.[format] headers = "Organization: git-foo\n" subjectPrefix = CHANGE suffix = .txt numbered = auto to = <email> cc = <email> attach [ = mime-boundary-string ] signOff = true coverletter = auto
DISCUSSION¶
The patch produced by git format-patch is in UNIX mailbox format, with a fixed "magic" time stamp to indicate that the file is output from format-patch rather than a real mailbox, like so:From 8f72bad1baf19a53459661343e21d6491c3908d3 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Tony Luck <tony.luck@intel.com> Date: Tue, 13 Jul 2010 11:42:54 -0700 Subject: [PATCH] =?UTF-8?q?[IA64]=20Put=20ia64=20config=20files=20on=20the=20?= =?UTF-8?q?Uwe=20Kleine-K=C3=B6nig=20diet?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit arch/arm config files were slimmed down using a python script (See commit c2330e286f68f1c408b4aa6515ba49d57f05beae comment) Do the same for ia64 so we can have sleek & trim looking ...
... > So we should do such-and-such. Makes sense to me. How about this patch? -- >8 -- Subject: [IA64] Put ia64 config files on the Uwe Kleine-König diet arch/arm config files were slimmed down using a python script ...
Checking for patch corruption¶
Many mailers if not set up properly will corrupt whitespace. Here are two common types of corruption:•Empty context lines that do not have any
whitespace.
•Non-empty context lines that have one extra
whitespace at the beginning.
One way to test if your MUA is set up correctly is:
•Send the patch to yourself, exactly the way you
would, except with To: and Cc: lines that do not contain the list and
maintainer address.
•Save that patch to a file in UNIX mailbox format.
Call it a.patch, say.
•Apply it:
If it does not apply correctly, there can be various reasons.
$ git fetch <project> master:test-apply $ git checkout test-apply $ git reset --hard $ git am a.patch
•The patch itself does not apply cleanly. That is
bad but does not have much to do with your MUA. You might want to
rebase the patch with git-rebase(1) before regenerating it in this
case.
•The MUA corrupted your patch; "am"
would complain that the patch does not apply. Look in the .git/rebase-apply/
subdirectory and see what patch file contains and check for the common
corruption patterns mentioned above.
•While at it, check the info and
final-commit files as well. If what is in final-commit is not
exactly what you would want to see in the commit log message, it is very
likely that the receiver would end up hand editing the log message when
applying your patch. Things like "Hi, this is my first patch.\n" in
the patch e-mail should come after the three-dash line that signals the end of
the commit message.
MUA-SPECIFIC HINTS¶
Here are some hints on how to successfully submit patches inline using various mailers.GMail¶
GMail does not have any way to turn off line wrapping in the web interface, so it will mangle any emails that you send. You can however use "git send-email" and send your patches through the GMail SMTP server, or use any IMAP email client to connect to the google IMAP server and forward the emails through that. For hints on using git send-email to send your patches through the GMail SMTP server, see the EXAMPLE section of git-send-email(1). For hints on submission using the IMAP interface, see the EXAMPLE section of git-imap-send(1).Thunderbird¶
By default, Thunderbird will both wrap emails as well as flag them as being format=flowed, both of which will make the resulting email unusable by Git. There are three different approaches: use an add-on to turn off line wraps, configure Thunderbird to not mangle patches, or use an external editor to keep Thunderbird from mangling the patches.
Install the Toggle Word Wrap add-on that is available from
https://addons.mozilla.org/thunderbird/addon/toggle-word-wrap/ It adds
a menu entry "Enable Word Wrap" in the composer’s
"Options" menu that you can tick off. Now you can compose the
message as you otherwise do (cut + paste, git format-patch | git
imap-send, etc), but you have to insert line breaks manually in any text
that you type.
Three steps:
1.Configure your mail server composition as plain text:
Edit...Account Settings...Composition & Addressing, uncheck "Compose
Messages in HTML".
2.Configure your general composition window to not wrap.
In Thunderbird 2: Edit..Preferences..Composition, wrap plain text messages at 0
In Thunderbird 3: Edit..Preferences..Advanced..Config Editor. Search for
"mail.wrap_long_lines". Toggle it to make sure it is set to
false. Also, search for "mailnews.wraplength" and set the
value to 0.
3.Disable the use of format=flowed:
Edit..Preferences..Advanced..Config Editor. Search for
"mailnews.send_plaintext_flowed". Toggle it to make sure it is set
to false.
After that is done, you should be able to compose email as you otherwise would
(cut + paste, git format-patch | git imap-send, etc), and the
patches will not be mangled.
The following Thunderbird extensions are needed: AboutConfig from
http://aboutconfig.mozdev.org/ and External Editor from
http://globs.org/articles.php?lng=en&pg=8
There is a script in contrib/thunderbird-patch-inline which can help you include
patches with Thunderbird in an easy way. To use it, do the steps above and
then use the script as the external editor.
1.Prepare the patch as a text file using your method of
choice.
2.Before opening a compose window, use
Edit→Account Settings to uncheck the "Compose messages in HTML
format" setting in the "Composition & Addressing" panel of
the account to be used to send the patch.
3.In the main Thunderbird window, before you open
the compose window for the patch, use Tools→about:config to set the
following to the indicated values:
mailnews.send_plaintext_flowed => false mailnews.wraplength => 0
4.Open a compose window and click the external editor
icon.
5.In the external editor window, read in the patch file
and exit the editor normally.
Side note: it may be possible to do step 2 with about:config and the following
settings but no one’s tried yet.
mail.html_compose => false mail.identity.default.compose_html => false mail.identity.id?.compose_html => false
KMail¶
This should help you to submit patches inline using KMail. 1.Prepare the patch as a text file.
2.Click on New Mail.
3.Go under "Options" in the Composer window
and be sure that "Word wrap" is not set.
4.Use Message → Insert file... and insert the
patch.
5.Back in the compose window: add whatever other text
you wish to the message, complete the addressing and subject fields, and press
send.
BASE TREE INFORMATION¶
The base tree information block is used for maintainers or third party testers to know the exact state the patch series applies to. It consists of the base commit, which is a well-known commit that is part of the stable part of the project history everybody else works off of, and zero or more prerequisite patches, which are well-known patches in flight that is not yet part of the base commit that need to be applied on top of base commit in topological order before the patches can be applied. The base commit is shown as "base-commit: " followed by the 40-hex of the commit object name. A prerequisite patch is shown as "prerequisite-patch-id: " followed by the 40-hex patch id, which can be obtained by passing the patch through the git patch-id --stable command. Imagine that on top of the public commit P, you applied well-known patches X, Y and Z from somebody else, and then built your three-patch series A, B, C, the history would be like:---P---X---Y---Z---A---B---C
base-commit: P prerequisite-patch-id: X prerequisite-patch-id: Y prerequisite-patch-id: Z
---P---X---A---M---C \ / Y---Z---B
EXAMPLES¶
•Extract commits between revisions R1 and R2, and
apply them on top of the current branch using git am to cherry-pick
them:
$ git format-patch -k --stdout R1..R2 | git am -3 -k
•Extract all commits which are in the current
branch but not in the origin branch:
For each commit a separate file is created in the current directory.
$ git format-patch origin
•Extract all commits that lead to origin
since the inception of the project:
$ git format-patch --root origin
•The same as the previous one:
Additionally, it detects and handles renames and complete rewrites intelligently
to produce a renaming patch. A renaming patch reduces the amount of text
output, and generally makes it easier to review. Note that non-Git
"patch" programs won’t understand renaming patches, so use it
only when you know the recipient uses Git to apply your patch.
$ git format-patch -M -B origin
•Extract three topmost commits from the current
branch and format them as e-mailable patches:
$ git format-patch -3
SEE ALSO¶
git-am(1), git-send-email(1)GIT¶
Part of the git(1) suite05/15/2017 | Git 2.11.0 |