path: root/Documentation/git-fast-export.txt

git-fast-export(1)
==================

NAME
----
git-fast-export - Git data exporter


SYNOPSIS
--------
[verse]
'git fast-export [options]' | 'git fast-import'

DESCRIPTION
-----------
This program dumps the given revisions in a form suitable to be piped
into 'git fast-import'.

You can use it as a human-readable bundle replacement (see
linkgit:git-bundle[1]), or as a kind of an interactive
'git filter-branch'.


OPTIONS
-------
--progress=<n>::
	Insert 'progress' statements every <n> objects, to be shown by
	'git fast-import' during import.

--signed-tags=(verbatim|warn|warn-strip|strip|abort)::
	Specify how to handle signed tags.  Since any transformation
	after the export can change the tag names (which can also happen
	when excluding revisions) the signatures will not match.
+
When asking to 'abort' (which is the default), this program will die
when encountering a signed tag.  With 'strip', the tags will silently
be made unsigned, with 'warn-strip' they will be made unsigned but a
warning will be displayed, with 'verbatim', they will be silently
exported and with 'warn', they will be exported, but you will see a
warning.

--tag-of-filtered-object=(abort|drop|rewrite)::
	Specify how to handle tags whose tagged object is filtered out.
	Since revisions and files to export can be limited by path,
	tagged objects may be filtered completely.
+
When asking to 'abort' (which is the default), this program will die
when encountering such a tag.  With 'drop' it will omit such tags from
the output.  With 'rewrite', if the tagged object is a commit, it will
rewrite the tag to tag an ancestor commit (via parent rewriting; see
linkgit:git-rev-list[1])

-M::
-C::
	Perform move and/or copy detection, as described in the
	linkgit:git-diff[1] manual page, and use it to generate
	rename and copy commands in the output dump.
+
Note that earlier versions of this command did not complain and
produced incorrect results if you gave these options.

--export-marks=<file>::
	Dumps the internal marks table to <file> when complete.
	Marks are written one per line as `:markid SHA-1`. Only marks
	for revisions are dumped; marks for blobs are ignored.
	Backends can use this file to validate imports after they
	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.
	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.
+
Any commits that have already been marked will not be exported again.
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.

--fake-missing-tagger::
	Some old repositories have tags without a tagger.  The
	fast-import protocol was pretty strict about that, and did not
	allow that.  So fake a tagger to be able to fast-import the
	output.

--use-done-feature::
	Start the stream with a 'feature done' stanza, and terminate
	it with a 'done' command.

--no-data::
	Skip output of blob objects and instead refer to blobs via
	their original SHA-1 hash.  This is useful when rewriting the
	directory structure or history of a repository without
	touching the contents of individual files.  Note that the
	resulting stream can only be used by a repository which
	already contains the necessary objects.

--full-tree::
	This option will cause fast-export to issue a "deleteall"
	directive for each commit followed by a full list of all files
	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.

[<git-rev-list-args>...]::
	A list of arguments, acceptable to 'git rev-parse' and
	'git rev-list', that specifies the specific objects and references
	to export.  For example, `master~10..master` causes the
	current master reference to be exported along with all objects
	added since its 10th ancestor commit.

EXAMPLES
--------

-------------------------------------------------------------------
$ git fast-export --all | (cd /empty/repository && git fast-import)
-------------------------------------------------------------------

This will export the whole repository and import it into the existing
empty repository.  Except for reencoding commits that are not in
UTF-8, it would be a one-to-one mirror.

-----------------------------------------------------
$ git fast-export master~5..master |
	sed "s|refs/heads/master|refs/heads/other|" |
	git fast-import
-----------------------------------------------------

This makes a new branch called 'other' from 'master~5..master'
(i.e. if 'master' has linear history, it will take the last 5 commits).

Note that this assumes that none of the blobs and commit messages
referenced by that revision range contains the string
'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
-----------

Since 'git fast-import' cannot tag trees, you will not be
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