git-am(1) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | DISCUSSION | HOOKS | CONFIGURATION | SEE ALSO | GIT | COLOPHON

GIT-AM(1)                      Git Manual                      GIT-AM(1)

NAME         top

       git-am - Apply a series of patches from a mailbox

SYNOPSIS         top

       git am [--signoff] [--keep] [--[no-]keep-cr] [--[no-]utf8] [--no-verify]
                [--[no-]3way] [--interactive] [--committer-date-is-author-date]
                [--ignore-date] [--ignore-space-change | --ignore-whitespace]
                [--whitespace=<action>] [-C<n>] [-p<n>] [--directory=<dir>]
                [--exclude=<path>] [--include=<path>] [--reject] [-q | --quiet]
                [--[no-]scissors] [-S[<keyid>]] [--patch-format=<format>]
                [--quoted-cr=<action>]
                [--empty=(stop|drop|keep)]
                [(<mbox> | <Maildir>)...]
       git am (--continue | --skip | --abort | --quit | --show-current-patch[=(diff|raw)] | --allow-empty)

DESCRIPTION         top

       Splits mail messages in a mailbox into commit log messages,
       authorship information, and patches, and applies them to the
       current branch. You could think of it as a reverse operation of
       git-format-patch(1) run on a branch with a straight history
       without merges.

OPTIONS         top

       (<mbox>|<Maildir>)...
           The list of mailbox files to read patches from. If you do not
           supply this argument, the command reads from the standard
           input. If you supply directories, they will be treated as
           Maildirs.

       -s, --signoff
           Add a Signed-off-by trailer to the commit message, using the
           committer identity of yourself. See the signoff option in
           git-commit(1) for more information.

       -k, --keep
           Pass -k flag to git mailinfo (see git-mailinfo(1)).

       --keep-non-patch
           Pass -b flag to git mailinfo (see git-mailinfo(1)).

       --[no-]keep-cr
           With --keep-cr, call git mailsplit (see git-mailsplit(1))
           with the same option, to prevent it from stripping CR at the
           end of lines.  am.keepcr configuration variable can be used
           to specify the default behaviour.  --no-keep-cr is useful to
           override am.keepcr.

       -c, --scissors
           Remove everything in body before a scissors line (see
           git-mailinfo(1)). Can be activated by default using the
           mailinfo.scissors configuration variable.

       --no-scissors
           Ignore scissors lines (see git-mailinfo(1)).

       --quoted-cr=<action>
           This flag will be passed down to git mailinfo (see
           git-mailinfo(1)).

       --empty=(stop|drop|keep)
           By default, or when the option is set to stop, the command
           errors out on an input e-mail message lacking a patch and
           stops in the middle of the current am session. When this
           option is set to drop, skip such an e-mail message instead.
           When this option is set to keep, create an empty commit,
           recording the contents of the e-mail message as its log.

       -m, --message-id
           Pass the -m flag to git mailinfo (see git-mailinfo(1)), so
           that the Message-ID header is added to the commit message.
           The am.messageid configuration variable can be used to
           specify the default behaviour.

       --no-message-id
           Do not add the Message-ID header to the commit message.
           no-message-id is useful to override am.messageid.

       -q, --quiet
           Be quiet. Only print error messages.

       -u, --utf8
           Pass -u flag to git mailinfo (see git-mailinfo(1)). The
           proposed commit log message taken from the e-mail is re-coded
           into UTF-8 encoding (configuration variable
           i18n.commitEncoding can be used to specify the project’s
           preferred encoding if it is not UTF-8).

           This was optional in prior versions of git, but now it is the
           default. You can use --no-utf8 to override this.

       --no-utf8
           Pass -n flag to git mailinfo (see git-mailinfo(1)).

       -3, --3way, --no-3way
           When the patch does not apply cleanly, fall back on 3-way
           merge if the patch records the identity of blobs it is
           supposed to apply to and we have those blobs available
           locally.  --no-3way can be used to override am.threeWay
           configuration variable. For more information, see am.threeWay
           in git-config(1).

       --rerere-autoupdate, --no-rerere-autoupdate
           After the rerere mechanism reuses a recorded resolution on
           the current conflict to update the files in the working tree,
           allow it to also update the index with the result of
           resolution.  --no-rerere-autoupdate is a good way to
           double-check what rerere did and catch potential mismerges,
           before committing the result to the index with a separate git
           add.

       --ignore-space-change, --ignore-whitespace,
       --whitespace=<action>, -C<n>, -p<n>, --directory=<dir>,
       --exclude=<path>, --include=<path>, --reject
           These flags are passed to the git apply (see git-apply(1))
           program that applies the patch.

       --patch-format
           By default the command will try to detect the patch format
           automatically. This option allows the user to bypass the
           automatic detection and specify the patch format that the
           patch(es) should be interpreted as. Valid formats are mbox,
           mboxrd, stgit, stgit-series, and hg.

       -i, --interactive
           Run interactively.

       -n, --no-verify
           By default, the pre-applypatch and applypatch-msg hooks are
           run. When any of --no-verify or -n is given, these are
           bypassed. See also githooks(5).

       --committer-date-is-author-date
           By default the command records the date from the e-mail
           message as the commit author date, and uses the time of
           commit creation as the committer date. This allows the user
           to lie about the committer date by using the same value as
           the author date.

       --ignore-date
           By default the command records the date from the e-mail
           message as the commit author date, and uses the time of
           commit creation as the committer date. This allows the user
           to lie about the author date by using the same value as the
           committer date.

       --skip
           Skip the current patch. This is only meaningful when
           restarting an aborted patch.

       -S[<keyid>], --gpg-sign[=<keyid>], --no-gpg-sign
           GPG-sign commits. The keyid argument is optional and defaults
           to the committer identity; if specified, it must be stuck to
           the option without a space.  --no-gpg-sign is useful to
           countermand both commit.gpgSign configuration variable, and
           earlier --gpg-sign.

       --continue, -r, --resolved
           After a patch failure (e.g. attempting to apply conflicting
           patch), the user has applied it by hand and the index file
           stores the result of the application. Make a commit using the
           authorship and commit log extracted from the e-mail message
           and the current index file, and continue.

       --resolvemsg=<msg>
           When a patch failure occurs, <msg> will be printed to the
           screen before exiting. This overrides the standard message
           informing you to use --continue or --skip to handle the
           failure. This is solely for internal use between git rebase
           and git am.

       --abort
           Restore the original branch and abort the patching operation.
           Revert the contents of files involved in the am operation to
           their pre-am state.

       --quit
           Abort the patching operation but keep HEAD and the index
           untouched.

       --show-current-patch[=(diff|raw)]
           Show the message at which git am has stopped due to
           conflicts. If raw is specified, show the raw contents of the
           e-mail message; if diff, show the diff portion only. Defaults
           to raw.

       --allow-empty
           After a patch failure on an input e-mail message lacking a
           patch, create an empty commit with the contents of the e-mail
           message as its log message.

DISCUSSION         top

       The commit author name is taken from the "From: " line of the
       message, and commit author date is taken from the "Date: " line
       of the message. The "Subject: " line is used as the title of the
       commit, after stripping common prefix "[PATCH <anything>]". The
       "Subject: " line is supposed to concisely describe what the
       commit is about in one line of text.

       "From: ", "Date: ", and "Subject: " lines starting the body
       override the respective commit author name and title values taken
       from the headers.

       The commit message is formed by the title taken from the
       "Subject: ", a blank line and the body of the message up to where
       the patch begins. Excess whitespace at the end of each line is
       automatically stripped.

       The patch is expected to be inline, directly following the
       message. Any line that is of the form:

       •   three-dashes and end-of-line, or

       •   a line that begins with "diff -", or

       •   a line that begins with "Index: "

       is taken as the beginning of a patch, and the commit log message
       is terminated before the first occurrence of such a line.

       When initially invoking git am, you give it the names of the
       mailboxes to process. Upon seeing the first patch that does not
       apply, it aborts in the middle. You can recover from this in one
       of two ways:

        1. skip the current patch by re-running the command with the
           --skip option.

        2. hand resolve the conflict in the working directory, and
           update the index file to bring it into a state that the patch
           should have produced. Then run the command with the
           --continue option.

       The command refuses to process new mailboxes until the current
       operation is finished, so if you decide to start over from
       scratch, run git am --abort before running the command with
       mailbox names.

       Before any patches are applied, ORIG_HEAD is set to the tip of
       the current branch. This is useful if you have problems with
       multiple commits, like running git am on the wrong branch or an
       error in the commits that is more easily fixed by changing the
       mailbox (e.g. errors in the "From:" lines).

HOOKS         top

       This command can run applypatch-msg, pre-applypatch, and
       post-applypatch hooks. See githooks(5) for more information.

CONFIGURATION         top

       Everything below this line in this section is selectively
       included from the git-config(1) documentation. The content is the
       same as what’s found there:

       am.keepcr
           If true, git-am will call git-mailsplit for patches in mbox
           format with parameter --keep-cr. In this case git-mailsplit
           will not remove \r from lines ending with \r\n. Can be
           overridden by giving --no-keep-cr from the command line. See
           git-am(1), git-mailsplit(1).

       am.threeWay
           By default, git am will fail if the patch does not apply
           cleanly. When set to true, this setting tells git am to fall
           back on 3-way merge if the patch records the identity of
           blobs it is supposed to apply to and we have those blobs
           available locally (equivalent to giving the --3way option
           from the command line). Defaults to false. See git-am(1).

SEE ALSO         top

       git-apply(1), git-format-patch(1).

GIT         top

       Part of the git(1) suite

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the git (Git distributed version control
       system) project.  Information about the project can be found at
       ⟨http://git-scm.com/⟩.  If you have a bug report for this manual
       page, see ⟨http://git-scm.com/community⟩.  This page was obtained
       from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://github.com/git/git.git⟩ on 2023-12-22.  (At that time,
       the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
       repository was 2023-12-20.)  If you discover any rendering
       problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there
       is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
       corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       man-pages@man7.org

Git 2.43.0.174.g055bb6         2023-12-20                      GIT-AM(1)

Pages that refer to this page: git(1)git-am(1)git-apply(1)git-cherry(1)git-config(1)git-format-patch(1)git-mailinfo(1)gitweb(1)githooks(5)giteveryday(7)gittutorial(7)gitworkflows(7)