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NAME

       git-format-patch - Prepare patches for e-mail submission

SYNOPSIS

       git format-patch [-k] [(-o|--output-directory) <dir> | --stdout]
                          [--no-thread | --thread[=<style>]]
                          [(--attach|--inline)[=<boundary>] | --no-attach]
                          [-s | --signoff]
                          [-n | --numbered | -N | --no-numbered]
                          [--start-number <n>] [--numbered-files]
                          [--in-reply-to=Message-Id] [--suffix=.<sfx>]
                          [--ignore-if-in-upstream]
                          [--subject-prefix=Subject-Prefix]
                          [--to=<email>] [--cc=<email>]
                          [--cover-letter]
                          [<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 git-rev-parse(1)) 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.

       By default, the subject of a single patch is "[PATCH] First Line" and
       the subject when multiple patches are output is "[PATCH n/m] First
       Line". 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-stat
           Generate plain patches without any diffstats.

       -U<n>, --unified=<n>
           Generate diffs with <n> lines of context instead of the usual
           three.

       --patience
           Generate a diff using the "patience diff" algorithm.

       --stat[=width[,name-width]]
           Generate a diffstat. You can override the default output width for
           80-column terminal by --stat=width. The width of the filename part
           can be controlled by giving another width to it separated by a
           comma.

       --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[=limit]
           Output the distribution of relative amount of changes (number of
           lines added or removed) for each sub-directory. Directories with
           changes below a cut-off percent (3% by default) are not shown. The
           cut-off percent can be set with --dirstat=limit. Changes in a child
           directory is not counted for the parent directory, unless
           --cumulative is used.

       --dirstat-by-file[=limit]
           Same as --dirstat, but counts changed files instead of lines.

       --summary
           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
           Break complete rewrite changes into pairs of delete and create.

       -M
           Detect renames.

       -C
           Detect copies as well as renames. See also --find-copies-harder.

       --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.

       -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.

       -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.

       --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.

       --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.

       --ignore-submodules
           Ignore changes to submodules in the diff generation.

       --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.

       For more detailed explanation on these common options, see also
       gitdiffcore(7).

       -<n>
           Limits the number of patches to prepare.

       -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.

       --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.

       --to=<email>
           Add a To: header to the email headers. This is in addition to any
           configured headers, and may be used multiple times.

       --cc=<email>
           Add a Cc: header to the email headers. This is in addition to any
           configured headers, and may be used multiple times.

       --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"

       --cover-letter
           In addition to the patches, generate a cover letter file containing
           the shortlog and the overall diffstat. You can fill in a
           description in the file before sending it out.

       --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.

       --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.

       --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

EXAMPLES

       o   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

       o   Extract all commits which are in the current branch but not in the
           origin branch:

               $ git format-patch origin

           For each commit a separate file is created in the current
           directory.

       o   Extract all commits that lead to origin since the inception of the
           project:

               $ git format-patch --root origin

       o   The same as the previous one:

               $ git format-patch -M -B origin

           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.

       o   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)

AUTHOR

       Written by Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com[1]>

DOCUMENTATION

       Documentation by Junio C Hamano and the git-list
       <git@vger.kernel.org[2]>.

GIT

       Part of the git(1) suite

NOTES

        1. gitster@pobox.com
           mailto:gitster@pobox.com

        2. git@vger.kernel.org
           mailto:git@vger.kernel.org