git [-v | --version] [-h | --help] [-C <path>] [-c <name>=<value>]
[--exec-path[=<path>]] [--html-path] [--man-path] [--info-path]
[-p|--paginate|-P|--no-pager] [--no-replace-objects] [--bare]
[--git-dir=<path>] [--work-tree=<path>] [--namespace=<name>]
[--config-env=<name>=<envvar>] <command> [<args>]
Git is a fast, scalable, distributed revision control system with an
unusually rich command set that provides both high-level operations
and full access to internals.
See
gittutorial[7]
to get started, then see
giteveryday[7]
for a useful minimum set of
commands. The
Git User’s Manual
has a more
in-depth introduction.
After you mastered the basic concepts, you can come back to this
page to learn what commands Git offers. You can learn more about
individual Git commands with "git help command".
gitcli[7]
manual page gives you an overview of the command-line command syntax.
A formatted and hyperlinked copy of the latest Git documentation
can be viewed at
https://git.github.io/htmldocs/git.html
or
https://git-scm.com/docs
.
Prints the Git suite version that the
git
program came from.
This option is internally converted to
git version ...
and accepts
the same options as the
git-version[1]
command. If
--help
is
also given, it takes precedence over
--version
.
--help
Prints the synopsis and a list of the most commonly used
commands. If the option
--all
or
-a
is given then all
available commands are printed. If a Git command is named this
option will bring up the manual page for that command.
Other options are available to control how the manual page is
displayed. See
git-help[1]
for more information,
because
git --help ...
is converted internally into
git
help ...
.
-C <path>
Run as if git was started in
<path>
instead of the current working
directory. When multiple
-C
options are given, each subsequent
non-absolute
-C <path>
is interpreted relative to the preceding
-C
<path>
. If
<path>
is present but empty, e.g.
-C ""
, then the
current working directory is left unchanged.
This option affects options that expect path name like
--git-dir
and
--work-tree
in that their interpretations of the path names would be
made relative to the working directory caused by the
-C
option. For
example the following invocations are equivalent:
git --git-dir=a.git --work-tree=b -C c status
git --git-dir=c/a.git --work-tree=c/b status
-c <name>=<value>
Pass a configuration parameter to the command. The value
given will override values from configuration files.
The <name> is expected in the same format as listed by
git config
(subkeys separated by dots).
Note that omitting the
=
in
git -c foo.bar ...
is allowed and sets
foo.bar
to the boolean true value (just like
[foo]bar
would in a
config file). Including the equals but with an empty value (like
git -c
foo.bar= ...
) sets
foo.bar
to the empty string which
git config
--type=bool
will convert to
false
.
--config-env=<name>=<envvar>
Like
-c <name>=<value>
, give configuration variable
<name>
a value, where <envvar> is the name of an
environment variable from which to retrieve the value. Unlike
-c
there is no shortcut for directly setting the value to an
empty string, instead the environment variable itself must be
set to the empty string. It is an error if the
<envvar>
does not exist
in the environment.
<envvar>
may not contain an equals sign
to avoid ambiguity with
<name>
containing one.
This is useful for cases where you want to pass transitory
configuration options to git, but are doing so on OS’s where
other processes might be able to read your cmdline
(e.g.
/proc/self/cmdline
), but not your environ
(e.g.
/proc/self/environ
). That behavior is the default on
Linux, but may not be on your system.
Note that this might add security for variables such as
http.extraHeader
where the sensitive information is part of
the value, but not e.g.
url.<base>.insteadOf
where the
sensitive information can be part of the key.
--exec-path[=<path>]
Path to wherever your core Git programs are installed.
This can also be controlled by setting the GIT_EXEC_PATH
environment variable. If no path is given,
git
will print
the current setting and then exit.
--html-path
Print the path, without trailing slash, where Git’s HTML
documentation is installed and exit.
--man-path
Print the manpath (see
man(1)
) for the man pages for
this version of Git and exit.
--info-path
Print the path where the Info files documenting this
version of Git are installed and exit.
--paginate
Pipe all output into
less
(or if set, $PAGER) if standard
output is a terminal. This overrides the
pager.<cmd>
configuration options (see the "Configuration Mechanism" section
below).
Do not pipe Git output into a pager.
--git-dir=<path>
Set the path to the repository (".git" directory). This can also be
controlled by setting the
GIT_DIR
environment variable. It can be
an absolute path or relative path to current working directory.
Specifying the location of the ".git" directory using this
option (or
GIT_DIR
environment variable) turns off the
repository discovery that tries to find a directory with
".git" subdirectory (which is how the repository and the
top-level of the working tree are discovered), and tells Git
that you are at the top level of the working tree. If you
are not at the top-level directory of the working tree, you
should tell Git where the top-level of the working tree is,
with the
--work-tree=<path>
option (or
GIT_WORK_TREE
environment variable)
If you just want to run git as if it was started in
<path>
then use
git -C <path>
.
--work-tree=<path>
Set the path to the working tree. It can be an absolute path
or a path relative to the current working directory.
This can also be controlled by setting the GIT_WORK_TREE
environment variable and the core.worktree configuration
variable (see core.worktree in
git-config[1]
for a
more detailed discussion).
--namespace=<path>
Set the Git namespace. See
gitnamespaces[7]
for more
details. Equivalent to setting the
GIT_NAMESPACE
environment
variable.
--bare
Treat the repository as a bare repository. If GIT_DIR
environment is not set, it is set to the current working
directory.
--no-replace-objects
Do not use replacement refs to replace Git objects. See
git-replace[1]
for more information.
--literal-pathspecs
Treat pathspecs literally (i.e. no globbing, no pathspec magic).
This is equivalent to setting the
GIT_LITERAL_PATHSPECS
environment
variable to
1
.
--glob-pathspecs
Add "glob" magic to all pathspec. This is equivalent to setting
the
GIT_GLOB_PATHSPECS
environment variable to
1
. Disabling
globbing on individual pathspecs can be done using pathspec
magic ":(literal)"
--noglob-pathspecs
Add "literal" magic to all pathspec. This is equivalent to setting
the
GIT_NOGLOB_PATHSPECS
environment variable to
1
. Enabling
globbing on individual pathspecs can be done using pathspec
magic ":(glob)"
--icase-pathspecs
Add "icase" magic to all pathspec. This is equivalent to setting
the
GIT_ICASE_PATHSPECS
environment variable to
1
.
--no-optional-locks
Do not perform optional operations that require locks. This is
equivalent to setting the
GIT_OPTIONAL_LOCKS
to
0
.
--list-cmds=group[,group…]
List commands by group. This is an internal/experimental
option and may change or be removed in the future. Supported
groups are: builtins, parseopt (builtin commands that use
parse-options), main (all commands in libexec directory),
others (all other commands in
$PATH
that have git- prefix),
list-<category> (see categories in command-list.txt),
nohelpers (exclude helper commands), alias and config
(retrieve command list from config variable completion.commands)
--attr-source=<tree-ish>
Read gitattributes from <tree-ish> instead of the worktree. See
gitattributes[5]
. This is equivalent to setting the
GIT_ATTR_SOURCE
environment variable.
We separate the porcelain commands into the main commands and some
ancillary user utilities.
git-add[1]
Add file contents to the index
git-am[1]
Apply a series of patches from a mailbox
git-archive[1]
Create an archive of files from a named tree
git-bisect[1]
Use binary search to find the commit that introduced a bug
git-branch[1]
List, create, or delete branches
git-bundle[1]
Move objects and refs by archive
git-checkout[1]
Switch branches or restore working tree files
git-cherry-pick[1]
Apply the changes introduced by some existing commits
git-citool[1]
Graphical alternative to git-commit
git-clean[1]
Remove untracked files from the working tree
git-clone[1]
Clone a repository into a new directory
git-commit[1]
Record changes to the repository
git-describe[1]
Give an object a human readable name based on an available ref
git-diff[1]
Show changes between commits, commit and working tree, etc
git-fetch[1]
Download objects and refs from another repository
git-format-patch[1]
Prepare patches for e-mail submission
git-gc[1]
Cleanup unnecessary files and optimize the local repository
git-grep[1]
Print lines matching a pattern
git-gui[1]
A portable graphical interface to Git
git-init[1]
Create an empty Git repository or reinitialize an existing one
git-log[1]
Show commit logs
git-maintenance[1]
Run tasks to optimize Git repository data
git-merge[1]
Join two or more development histories together
git-mv[1]
Move or rename a file, a directory, or a symlink
git-notes[1]
Add or inspect object notes
git-pull[1]
Fetch from and integrate with another repository or a local branch
git-push[1]
Update remote refs along with associated objects
git-range-diff[1]
Compare two commit ranges (e.g. two versions of a branch)
git-rebase[1]
Reapply commits on top of another base tip
git-reset[1]
Reset current HEAD to the specified state
git-restore[1]
Restore working tree files
git-revert[1]
Revert some existing commits
git-rm[1]
Remove files from the working tree and from the index
git-shortlog[1]
Summarize
git log
output
git-show[1]
Show various types of objects
git-sparse-checkout[1]
Reduce your working tree to a subset of tracked files
git-stash[1]
Stash the changes in a dirty working directory away
git-status[1]
Show the working tree status
git-submodule[1]
Initialize, update or inspect submodules
git-switch[1]
Switch branches
git-tag[1]
Create, list, delete or verify a tag object signed with GPG
git-worktree[1]
Manage multiple working trees
gitk[1]
The Git repository browser
scalar[1]
A tool for managing large Git repositories
git-revert[1]
is about making a new commit that reverts the
changes made by other commits.
git-restore[1]
is about restoring files in the working tree
from either the index or another commit. This command does not
update your branch. The command can also be used to restore files in
the index from another commit.
git-reset[1]
is about updating your branch, moving the tip
in order to add or remove commits from the branch. This operation
changes the commit history.
git reset
can also be used to restore the index, overlapping with
git restore
.
Although Git includes its
own porcelain layer, its low-level commands are sufficient to support
development of alternative porcelains. Developers of such porcelains
might start by reading about
git-update-index[1]
and
git-read-tree[1]
.
The interface (input, output, set of options and the semantics)
to these low-level commands are meant to be a lot more stable
than Porcelain level commands, because these commands are
primarily for scripted use. The interface to Porcelain commands
on the other hand are subject to change in order to improve the
end user experience.
The following description divides
the low-level commands into commands that manipulate objects (in
the repository, index, and working tree), commands that interrogate and
compare objects, and commands that move objects and references between
repositories.
git-apply[1]
Apply a patch to files and/or to the index
git-checkout-index[1]
Copy files from the index to the working tree
git-commit-graph[1]
Write and verify Git commit-graph files
git-commit-tree[1]
Create a new commit object
git-hash-object[1]
Compute object ID and optionally create an object from a file
git-index-pack[1]
Build pack index file for an existing packed archive
git-merge-file[1]
Run a three-way file merge
git-merge-index[1]
Run a merge for files needing merging
git-mktag[1]
Creates a tag object with extra validation
git-mktree[1]
Build a tree-object from ls-tree formatted text
git-multi-pack-index[1]
Write and verify multi-pack-indexes
git-pack-objects[1]
Create a packed archive of objects
git-prune-packed[1]
Remove extra objects that are already in pack files
git-read-tree[1]
Reads tree information into the index
git-symbolic-ref[1]
Read, modify and delete symbolic refs
git-unpack-objects[1]
Unpack objects from a packed archive
git-update-index[1]
Register file contents in the working tree to the index
git-update-ref[1]
Update the object name stored in a ref safely
git-write-tree[1]
Create a tree object from the current index
This documentation discusses repository and command interfaces which
users are expected to interact with directly. See
--user-formats
in
git-help[1]
for more details on the criteria.
gitattributes[5]
Defining attributes per path
gitcli[7]
Git command-line interface and conventions
githooks[5]
Hooks used by Git
gitignore[5]
Specifies intentionally untracked files to ignore
gitmailmap[5]
Map author/committer names and/or E-Mail addresses
gitmodules[5]
Defining submodule properties
gitrepository-layout[5]
Git Repository Layout
gitrevisions[7]
Specifying revisions and ranges for Git
This documentation discusses file formats, over-the-wire protocols and
other git developer interfaces. See
--developer-interfaces
in
git-help[1]
.
gitformat-bundle[5]
The bundle file format
gitformat-chunk[5]
Chunk-based file formats
gitformat-commit-graph[5]
Git commit-graph format
gitformat-index[5]
Git index format
gitformat-pack[5]
Git pack format
gitformat-signature[5]
Git cryptographic signature formats
gitprotocol-capabilities[5]
Protocol v0 and v1 capabilities
gitprotocol-common[5]
Things common to various protocols
gitprotocol-http[5]
Git HTTP-based protocols
gitprotocol-pack[5]
How packs are transferred over-the-wire
gitprotocol-v2[5]
Git Wire Protocol, Version 2
Git uses a simple text format to store customizations that are per
repository and are per user. Such a configuration file may look
like this:
# A '#' or ';' character indicates a comment.
; core variables
[core]
; Don't trust file modes
filemode = false
; user identity
[user]
name = "Junio C Hamano"
email = "gitster@pobox.com"
Various commands read from the configuration file and adjust
their operation accordingly. See
git-config[1]
for a
list and more details about the configuration mechanism.
Indicates a tree, commit or tag object name. A
command that takes a <tree-ish> argument ultimately wants to
operate on a <tree> object but automatically dereferences
<commit> and <tag> objects that point at a <tree>.
<commit-ish>
Indicates a commit or tag object name. A
command that takes a <commit-ish> argument ultimately wants to
operate on a <commit> object but automatically dereferences
<tag> objects that point at a <commit>.
Indicates that an object type is required.
Currently one of:
blob
,
tree
,
commit
, or
tag
.
Indicates a filename - almost always relative to the
root of the tree structure
GIT_INDEX_FILE
describes.
Various Git commands pay attention to environment variables and change
their behavior. The environment variables marked as "Boolean" take
their values the same way as Boolean valued configuration variables, e.g.
"true", "yes", "on" and positive numbers are taken as "yes".
Here are the variables:
These environment variables apply to
all
core Git commands. Nb: it
is worth noting that they may be used/overridden by SCMS sitting above
Git so take care if using a foreign front-end.
GIT_INDEX_FILE
This environment variable specifies an alternate
index file. If not specified, the default of
$GIT_DIR/index
is used.
GIT_INDEX_VERSION
This environment variable specifies what index version is used
when writing the index file out. It won’t affect existing index
files. By default index file version 2 or 3 is used. See
git-update-index[1]
for more information.
GIT_OBJECT_DIRECTORY
If the object storage directory is specified via this
environment variable then the sha1 directories are created
underneath - otherwise the default
$GIT_DIR/objects
directory is used.
GIT_ALTERNATE_OBJECT_DIRECTORIES
Due to the immutable nature of Git objects, old objects can be
archived into shared, read-only directories. This variable
specifies a ":" separated (on Windows ";" separated) list
of Git object directories which can be used to search for Git
objects. New objects will not be written to these directories.
Entries that begin with
"
(double-quote) will be interpreted
as C-style quoted paths, removing leading and trailing
double-quotes and respecting backslash escapes. E.g., the value
"path-with-\"-and-:-in-it":vanilla-path
has two paths:
path-with-"-and-:-in-it
and
vanilla-path
.
GIT_DIR
If the
GIT_DIR
environment variable is set then it
specifies a path to use instead of the default
.git
for the base of the repository.
The
--git-dir
command-line option also sets this value.
GIT_WORK_TREE
Set the path to the root of the working tree.
This can also be controlled by the
--work-tree
command-line
option and the core.worktree configuration variable.
GIT_NAMESPACE
Set the Git namespace; see
gitnamespaces[7]
for details.
The
--namespace
command-line option also sets this value.
GIT_CEILING_DIRECTORIES
This should be a colon-separated list of absolute paths. If
set, it is a list of directories that Git should not chdir up
into while looking for a repository directory (useful for
excluding slow-loading network directories). It will not
exclude the current working directory or a GIT_DIR set on the
command line or in the environment. Normally, Git has to read
the entries in this list and resolve any symlink that
might be present in order to compare them with the current
directory. However, if even this access is slow, you
can add an empty entry to the list to tell Git that the
subsequent entries are not symlinks and needn’t be resolved;
e.g.,
GIT_CEILING_DIRECTORIES=/maybe/symlink::/very/slow/non/symlink
.
GIT_DISCOVERY_ACROSS_FILESYSTEM
When run in a directory that does not have ".git" repository
directory, Git tries to find such a directory in the parent
directories to find the top of the working tree, but by default it
does not cross filesystem boundaries. This Boolean environment variable
can be set to true to tell Git not to stop at filesystem
boundaries. Like
GIT_CEILING_DIRECTORIES
, this will not affect
an explicit repository directory set via
GIT_DIR
or on the
command line.
GIT_COMMON_DIR
If this variable is set to a path, non-worktree files that are
normally in $GIT_DIR will be taken from this path
instead. Worktree-specific files such as HEAD or index are
taken from $GIT_DIR. See
gitrepository-layout[5]
and
git-worktree[1]
for
details. This variable has lower precedence than other path
variables such as GIT_INDEX_FILE, GIT_OBJECT_DIRECTORY…
GIT_DEFAULT_HASH
If this variable is set, the default hash algorithm for new
repositories will be set to this value. This value is
ignored when cloning and the setting of the remote repository
is always used. The default is "sha1".
See
--object-format
in
git-init[1]
.
GIT_AUTHOR_NAME
The human-readable name used in the author identity when creating commit or
tag objects, or when writing reflogs. Overrides the
user.name
and
author.name
configuration settings.
GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL
The email address used in the author identity when creating commit or
tag objects, or when writing reflogs. Overrides the
user.email
and
author.email
configuration settings.
GIT_AUTHOR_DATE
The date used for the author identity when creating commit or tag objects, or
when writing reflogs. See
git-commit[1]
for valid formats.
GIT_COMMITTER_NAME
The human-readable name used in the committer identity when creating commit or
tag objects, or when writing reflogs. Overrides the
user.name
and
committer.name
configuration settings.
GIT_COMMITTER_EMAIL
The email address used in the author identity when creating commit or
tag objects, or when writing reflogs. Overrides the
user.email
and
committer.email
configuration settings.
GIT_COMMITTER_DATE
The date used for the committer identity when creating commit or tag objects, or
when writing reflogs. See
git-commit[1]
for valid formats.
EMAIL
The email address used in the author and committer identities if no other
relevant environment variable or configuration setting has been set.
Only valid setting is "--unified=??" or "-u??" to set the
number of context lines shown when a unified diff is created.
This takes precedence over any "-U" or "--unified" option
value passed on the Git diff command line.
GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF
When the environment variable
GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF
is set, the
program named by it is called to generate diffs, and Git
does not use its builtin diff machinery.
For a path that is added, removed, or modified,
GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF
is called with 7 parameters:
path old-file old-hex old-mode new-file new-hex new-mode
where:
<old|new>-file
are files GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF can use to read the
contents of <old|new>,
<old|new>-hex
are the 40-hexdigit SHA-1 hashes,
<old|new>-mode
are the octal representation of the file modes.
The file parameters can point at the user’s working file
(e.g.
new-file
in "git-diff-files"),
/dev/null
(e.g.
old-file
when a new file is added), or a temporary file (e.g.
old-file
in the
index).
GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF
should not worry about unlinking the
temporary file — it is removed when
GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF
exits.
For a path that is unmerged,
GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF
is called with 1
parameter, <path>.
For each path
GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF
is called, two environment variables,
GIT_DIFF_PATH_COUNTER
and
GIT_DIFF_PATH_TOTAL
are set.
GIT_DIFF_PATH_COUNTER
A 1-based counter incremented by one for every path.
GIT_DIFF_PATH_TOTAL
The total number of paths.
A number controlling the amount of output shown by
the recursive merge strategy. Overrides merge.verbosity.
See
git-merge[1]
This environment variable overrides
$PAGER
. If it is set
to an empty string or to the value "cat", Git will not launch
a pager. See also the
core.pager
option in
git-config[1]
.
GIT_PROGRESS_DELAY
A number controlling how many seconds to delay before showing
optional progress indicators. Defaults to 2.
GIT_EDITOR
This environment variable overrides
$EDITOR
and
$VISUAL
.
It is used by several Git commands when, on interactive mode,
an editor is to be launched. See also
git-var[1]
and the
core.editor
option in
git-config[1]
.
GIT_SEQUENCE_EDITOR
This environment variable overrides the configured Git editor
when editing the todo list of an interactive rebase. See also
git-rebase[1]
and the
sequence.editor
option in
git-config[1]
.
GIT_SSH
GIT_SSH_COMMAND
If either of these environment variables is set then
git fetch
and
git push
will use the specified command instead of
ssh
when they need to connect to a remote system.
The command-line parameters passed to the configured command are
determined by the ssh variant. See
ssh.variant
option in
git-config[1]
for details.
$GIT_SSH_COMMAND
takes precedence over
$GIT_SSH
, and is interpreted
by the shell, which allows additional arguments to be included.
$GIT_SSH
on the other hand must be just the path to a program
(which can be a wrapper shell script, if additional arguments are
needed).
Usually it is easier to configure any desired options through your
personal
.ssh/config
file. Please consult your ssh documentation
for further details.
GIT_SSH_VARIANT
If this environment variable is set, it overrides Git’s autodetection
whether
GIT_SSH
/
GIT_SSH_COMMAND
/
core.sshCommand
refer to OpenSSH,
plink or tortoiseplink. This variable overrides the config setting
ssh.variant
that serves the same purpose.
GIT_SSL_NO_VERIFY
Setting and exporting this environment variable to any value
tells Git not to verify the SSL certificate when fetching or
pushing over HTTPS.
GIT_ATTR_SOURCE
Sets the treeish that gitattributes will be read from.
GIT_ASKPASS
If this environment variable is set, then Git commands which need to
acquire passwords or passphrases (e.g. for HTTP or IMAP authentication)
will call this program with a suitable prompt as command-line argument
and read the password from its STDOUT. See also the
core.askPass
option in
git-config[1]
.
GIT_TERMINAL_PROMPT
If this Boolean environment variable is set to false, git will not prompt
on the terminal (e.g., when asking for HTTP authentication).
GIT_CONFIG_GLOBAL
GIT_CONFIG_SYSTEM
Take the configuration from the given files instead from global or
system-level configuration files. If
GIT_CONFIG_SYSTEM
is set, the
system config file defined at build time (usually
/etc/gitconfig
)
will not be read. Likewise, if
GIT_CONFIG_GLOBAL
is set, neither
$HOME/.gitconfig
nor
$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/git/config
will be read. Can
be set to
/dev/null
to skip reading configuration files of the
respective level.
GIT_CONFIG_NOSYSTEM
Whether to skip reading settings from the system-wide
$(prefix)/etc/gitconfig
file. This Boolean environment variable can
be used along with
$HOME
and
$XDG_CONFIG_HOME
to create a
predictable environment for a picky script, or you can set it
to true to temporarily avoid using a buggy
/etc/gitconfig
file while
waiting for someone with sufficient permissions to fix it.
GIT_FLUSH
If this environment variable is set to "1", then commands such
as
git blame
(in incremental mode),
git rev-list
,
git log
,
git check-attr
and
git check-ignore
will
force a flush of the output stream after each record have been
flushed. If this
variable is set to "0", the output of these commands will be done
using completely buffered I/O. If this environment variable is
not set, Git will choose buffered or record-oriented flushing
based on whether stdout appears to be redirected to a file or not.
GIT_TRACE
Enables general trace messages, e.g. alias expansion, built-in
command execution and external command execution.
If this variable is set to "1", "2" or "true" (comparison
is case insensitive), trace messages will be printed to
stderr.
If the variable is set to an integer value greater than 2
and lower than 10 (strictly) then Git will interpret this
value as an open file descriptor and will try to write the
trace messages into this file descriptor.
Alternatively, if the variable is set to an absolute path
(starting with a
/
character), Git will interpret this
as a file path and will try to append the trace messages
to it.
Unsetting the variable, or setting it to empty, "0" or
"false" (case insensitive) disables trace messages.
GIT_TRACE_FSMONITOR
Enables trace messages for the filesystem monitor extension.
See
GIT_TRACE
for available trace output options.
GIT_TRACE_PACK_ACCESS
Enables trace messages for all accesses to any packs. For each
access, the pack file name and an offset in the pack is
recorded. This may be helpful for troubleshooting some
pack-related performance problems.
See
GIT_TRACE
for available trace output options.
GIT_TRACE_PACKET
Enables trace messages for all packets coming in or out of a
given program. This can help with debugging object negotiation
or other protocol issues. Tracing is turned off at a packet
starting with "PACK" (but see
GIT_TRACE_PACKFILE
below).
See
GIT_TRACE
for available trace output options.
GIT_TRACE_PACKFILE
Enables tracing of packfiles sent or received by a
given program. Unlike other trace output, this trace is
verbatim: no headers, and no quoting of binary data. You almost
certainly want to direct into a file (e.g.,
GIT_TRACE_PACKFILE=/tmp/my.pack
) rather than displaying it on
the terminal or mixing it with other trace output.
Note that this is currently only implemented for the client side
of clones and fetches.
GIT_TRACE_PERFORMANCE
Enables performance related trace messages, e.g. total execution
time of each Git command.
See
GIT_TRACE
for available trace output options.
GIT_TRACE_REFS
Enables trace messages for operations on the ref database.
See
GIT_TRACE
for available trace output options.
GIT_TRACE_SETUP
Enables trace messages printing the .git, working tree and current
working directory after Git has completed its setup phase.
See
GIT_TRACE
for available trace output options.
GIT_TRACE_SHALLOW
Enables trace messages that can help debugging fetching /
cloning of shallow repositories.
See
GIT_TRACE
for available trace output options.
GIT_TRACE_CURL
Enables a curl full trace dump of all incoming and outgoing data,
including descriptive information, of the git transport protocol.
This is similar to doing curl
--trace-ascii
on the command line.
See
GIT_TRACE
for available trace output options.
GIT_TRACE_CURL_NO_DATA
When a curl trace is enabled (see
GIT_TRACE_CURL
above), do not dump
data (that is, only dump info lines and headers).
GIT_TRACE2
Enables more detailed trace messages from the "trace2" library.
Output from
GIT_TRACE2
is a simple text-based format for human
readability.
If this variable is set to "1", "2" or "true" (comparison
is case insensitive), trace messages will be printed to
stderr.
If the variable is set to an integer value greater than 2
and lower than 10 (strictly) then Git will interpret this
value as an open file descriptor and will try to write the
trace messages into this file descriptor.
Alternatively, if the variable is set to an absolute path
(starting with a
/
character), Git will interpret this
as a file path and will try to append the trace messages
to it. If the path already exists and is a directory, the
trace messages will be written to files (one per process)
in that directory, named according to the last component
of the SID and an optional counter (to avoid filename
collisions).
In addition, if the variable is set to
af_unix:[<socket_type>:]<absolute-pathname>
, Git will try
to open the path as a Unix Domain Socket. The socket type
can be either
stream
or
dgram
.
Unsetting the variable, or setting it to empty, "0" or
"false" (case insensitive) disables trace messages.
See
Trace2 documentation
for full details.
GIT_TRACE2_EVENT
This setting writes a JSON-based format that is suited for machine
interpretation.
See
GIT_TRACE2
for available trace output options and
Trace2 documentation
for full details.
GIT_TRACE2_PERF
In addition to the text-based messages available in
GIT_TRACE2
, this
setting writes a column-based format for understanding nesting
regions.
See
GIT_TRACE2
for available trace output options and
Trace2 documentation
for full details.
GIT_TRACE_REDACT
By default, when tracing is activated, Git redacts the values of
cookies, the "Authorization:" header, the "Proxy-Authorization:"
header and packfile URIs. Set this Boolean environment variable to false to prevent this
redaction.
GIT_LITERAL_PATHSPECS
Setting this Boolean environment variable to true will cause Git to treat all
pathspecs literally, rather than as glob patterns. For example,
running
GIT_LITERAL_PATHSPECS=1 git log -- '*.c'
will search
for commits that touch the path
*.c
, not any paths that the
glob
*.c
matches. You might want this if you are feeding
literal paths to Git (e.g., paths previously given to you by
git ls-tree
,
--raw
diff output, etc).
GIT_GLOB_PATHSPECS
Setting this Boolean environment variable to true will cause Git to treat all
pathspecs as glob patterns (aka "glob" magic).
GIT_NOGLOB_PATHSPECS
Setting this Boolean environment variable to true will cause Git to treat all
pathspecs as literal (aka "literal" magic).
GIT_ICASE_PATHSPECS
Setting this Boolean environment variable to true will cause Git to treat all
pathspecs as case-insensitive.
GIT_REFLOG_ACTION
When a ref is updated, reflog entries are created to keep
track of the reason why the ref was updated (which is
typically the name of the high-level command that updated
the ref), in addition to the old and new values of the ref.
A scripted Porcelain command can use set_reflog_action
helper function in
git-sh-setup
to set its name to this
variable when it is invoked as the top level command by the
end user, to be recorded in the body of the reflog.
GIT_REF_PARANOIA
If this Boolean environment variable is set to false, ignore broken or badly named refs when iterating
over lists of refs. Normally Git will try to include any such
refs, which may cause some operations to fail. This is usually
preferable, as potentially destructive operations (e.g.,
git-prune[1]
) are better off aborting rather than
ignoring broken refs (and thus considering the history they
point to as not worth saving). The default value is
1
(i.e.,
be paranoid about detecting and aborting all operations). You
should not normally need to set this to
0
, but it may be
useful when trying to salvage data from a corrupted repository.
GIT_ALLOW_PROTOCOL
If set to a colon-separated list of protocols, behave as if
protocol.allow
is set to
never
, and each of the listed
protocols has
protocol.<name>.allow
set to
always
(overriding any existing configuration). See the description of
protocol.allow
in
git-config[1]
for more details.
GIT_PROTOCOL_FROM_USER
Set this Boolean environment variable to false to prevent protocols used by fetch/push/clone which are
configured to the
user
state. This is useful to restrict recursive
submodule initialization from an untrusted repository or for programs
which feed potentially-untrusted URLS to git commands. See
git-config[1]
for more details.
GIT_PROTOCOL
For internal use only. Used in handshaking the wire protocol.
Contains a colon
:
separated list of keys with optional values
key[=value]
. Presence of unknown keys and values must be
ignored.
Note that servers may need to be configured to allow this variable to
pass over some transports. It will be propagated automatically when
accessing local repositories (i.e.,
file://
or a filesystem path), as
well as over the
git://
protocol. For git-over-http, it should work
automatically in most configurations, but see the discussion in
git-http-backend[1]
. For git-over-ssh, the ssh server may need
to be configured to allow clients to pass this variable (e.g., by using
AcceptEnv GIT_PROTOCOL
with OpenSSH).
This configuration is optional. If the variable is not propagated, then
clients will fall back to the original "v0" protocol (but may miss out
on some performance improvements or features). This variable currently
only affects clones and fetches; it is not yet used for pushes (but may
be in the future).
GIT_OPTIONAL_LOCKS
If this Boolean environment variable is set to false, Git will complete any requested operation without
performing any optional sub-operations that require taking a lock.
For example, this will prevent
git status
from refreshing the
index as a side effect. This is useful for processes running in
the background which do not want to cause lock contention with
other operations on the repository. Defaults to
1
.
GIT_REDIRECT_STDIN
GIT_REDIRECT_STDOUT
GIT_REDIRECT_STDERR
Windows-only: allow redirecting the standard input/output/error
handles to paths specified by the environment variables. This is
particularly useful in multi-threaded applications where the
canonical way to pass standard handles via
CreateProcess()
is
not an option because it would require the handles to be marked
inheritable (and consequently
every
spawned process would
inherit them, possibly blocking regular Git operations). The
primary intended use case is to use named pipes for communication
(e.g.
\\.\pipe\my-git-stdin-123
).
Two special values are supported:
off
will simply close the
corresponding standard handle, and if
GIT_REDIRECT_STDERR
is
2>&1
, standard error will be redirected to the same handle as
standard output.
GIT_PRINT_SHA1_ELLIPSIS
(deprecated)
If set to
yes
, print an ellipsis following an
(abbreviated) SHA-1 value. This affects indications of
detached HEADs (
git-checkout[1]
) and the raw
diff output (
git-diff[1]
). Printing an
ellipsis in the cases mentioned is no longer considered
adequate and support for it is likely to be removed in the
foreseeable future (along with the variable).
More detail on the following is available from the
Git concepts chapter of the
user-manual
and
gitcore-tutorial[7]
.
A Git project normally consists of a working directory with a ".git"
subdirectory at the top level. The .git directory contains, among other
things, a compressed object database representing the complete history
of the project, an "index" file which links that history to the current
contents of the working tree, and named pointers into that history such
as tags and branch heads.
The object database contains objects of three main types: blobs, which
hold file data; trees, which point to blobs and other trees to build up
directory hierarchies; and commits, which each reference a single tree
and some number of parent commits.
The commit, equivalent to what other systems call a "changeset" or
"version", represents a step in the project’s history, and each parent
represents an immediately preceding step. Commits with more than one
parent represent merges of independent lines of development.
All objects are named by the SHA-1 hash of their contents, normally
written as a string of 40 hex digits. Such names are globally unique.
The entire history leading up to a commit can be vouched for by signing
just that commit. A fourth object type, the tag, is provided for this
purpose.
When first created, objects are stored in individual files, but for
efficiency may later be compressed together into "pack files".
Named pointers called refs mark interesting points in history. A ref
may contain the SHA-1 name of an object or the name of another ref. Refs
with names beginning
ref/head/
contain the SHA-1 name of the most
recent commit (or "head") of a branch under development. SHA-1 names of
tags of interest are stored under
ref/tags/
. A special ref named
HEAD
contains the name of the currently checked-out branch.
The index file is initialized with a list of all paths and, for each
path, a blob object and a set of attributes. The blob object represents
the contents of the file as of the head of the current branch. The
attributes (last modified time, size, etc.) are taken from the
corresponding file in the working tree. Subsequent changes to the
working tree can be found by comparing these attributes. The index may
be updated with new content, and new commits may be created from the
content stored in the index.
The index is also capable of storing multiple entries (called "stages")
for a given pathname. These stages are used to hold the various
unmerged version of a file when a merge is in progress.
See the references in the "description" section to get started
using Git. The following is probably more detail than necessary
for a first-time user.
The
Git concepts chapter of the
user-manual
and
gitcore-tutorial[7]
both provide
introductions to the underlying Git architecture.
See
gitworkflows[7]
for an overview of recommended workflows.
See also the
howto
documents for some useful
examples.
The internals are documented in the
Git API documentation
.
Users migrating from CVS may also want to
read
gitcvs-migration[7]
.
Git was started by Linus Torvalds, and is currently maintained by Junio
C Hamano. Numerous contributions have come from the Git mailing list
<
git@vger.kernel.org
>.
http://www.openhub.net/p/git/contributors/summary
gives you a more complete list of contributors.
If you have a clone of git.git itself, the
output of
git-shortlog[1]
and
git-blame[1]
can show you
the authors for specific parts of the project.
Report bugs to the Git mailing list <
git@vger.kernel.org
> where the
development and maintenance is primarily done. You do not have to be
subscribed to the list to send a message there. See the list archive
at
https://lore.kernel.org/git
for previous bug reports and other
discussions.
Issues which are security relevant should be disclosed privately to
the Git Security mailing list <
git-security@googlegroups.com
>.
gittutorial[7]
,
gittutorial-2[7]
,
giteveryday[7]
,
gitcvs-migration[7]
,
gitglossary[7]
,
gitcore-tutorial[7]
,
gitcli[7]
,
The Git User’s Manual
,
gitworkflows[7]
