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authorThomas Rast <trast@student.ethz.ch>2009-03-26 18:29:25 +0100
committerJunio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>2009-03-27 00:38:01 -0700
commit2d266f9d623625e0a28fbe3c3615707500e9448f (patch)
tree2bc21a604597cb9336701548b288fc1599835984 /Documentation/git-format-patch.txt
parent5d83f9c19810229bb765ef63864e4f252e83ad61 (diff)
downloadgit-2d266f9d623625e0a28fbe3c3615707500e9448f.tar.gz
Documentation: format-patch --root clarifications
Users were confused about the meaning and use of the --root option. Notably, since 68c2ec7 (format-patch: show patch text for the root commit, 2009-01-10), --root has nothing to do with showing the patch text for the root commit any more. Shorten and clarify the corresponding paragraph in the DESCRIPTION section, document --root under OPTIONS, and add an explicit note that root commits are formatted regardless. Signed-off-by: Thomas Rast <trast@student.ethz.ch> Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/git-format-patch.txt')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/git-format-patch.txt21
1 files changed, 12 insertions, 9 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/git-format-patch.txt b/Documentation/git-format-patch.txt
index 11a7d77261..1f577b8016 100644
--- a/Documentation/git-format-patch.txt
+++ b/Documentation/git-format-patch.txt
@@ -39,15 +39,11 @@ There are two ways to specify which commits to operate on.
REVISIONS" section in linkgit:git-rev-parse[1]) means the
commits in the specified range.
-A single commit, when interpreted as a <revision range>
-expression, means "everything that leads to that commit", but
-if you write 'git format-patch <commit>', the previous rule
-applies to that command line and you do not get "everything
-since the beginning of the time". If you want to format
-everything since project inception to one commit, say "git
-format-patch \--root <commit>" to make it clear that it is the
-latter case. If you want to format a single commit, you can do
-this with "git format-patch -1 <commit>".
+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
@@ -170,6 +166,13 @@ not add any suffix.
applied. By default the contents of changes in those files are
encoded in the patch.
+--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
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