man1/git-fast-export.1

'\" t
.\"     Title: git-fast-export
.\"    Author: [FIXME: author] [see http://www.docbook.org/tdg5/en/html/author]
.\" Generator: DocBook XSL Stylesheets v1.79.2 <http://docbook.sf.net/>
.\"      Date: 2025-09-29
.\"    Manual: Git Manual
.\"    Source: Git 2.51.0.372.g821f583da6
.\"  Language: English
.\"
.TH "GIT\-FAST\-EXPORT" "1" "2025-09-29" "Git 2\&.51\&.0\&.372\&.g821f58" "Git Manual"
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.SH "NAME"
git-fast-export \- Git data exporter
.SH "SYNOPSIS"
.sp
.nf
\fIgit fast\-export\fR [<options>] | \fIgit fast\-import\fR
.fi
.SH "DESCRIPTION"
.sp
This program dumps the given revisions in a form suitable to be piped into \fIgit fast\-import\fR\&.
.sp
You can use it as a human\-readable bundle replacement (see \fBgit-bundle\fR(1)), or as a format that can be edited before being fed to \fIgit fast\-import\fR in order to do history rewrites (an ability relied on by tools like \fIgit filter\-repo\fR)\&.
.SH "OPTIONS"
.PP
\-\-progress=<n>
.RS 4
Insert
\fIprogress\fR
statements every <n> objects, to be shown by
\fIgit fast\-import\fR
during import\&.
.RE
.PP
\-\-signed\-tags=(verbatim|warn\-verbatim|warn\-strip|strip|abort)
.RS 4
Specify how to handle signed tags\&. Since any transformation after the export (or during the export, such as excluding revisions) can change the hashes being signed, the signatures may become invalid\&.
.sp
When asking to
\fIabort\fR
(which is the default), this program will die when encountering a signed tag\&. With
\fIstrip\fR, the tags will silently be made unsigned, with
\fIwarn\-strip\fR
they will be made unsigned but a warning will be displayed, with
\fIverbatim\fR, they will be silently exported and with
\fIwarn\-verbatim\fR
(or
\fIwarn\fR, a deprecated synonym), they will be exported, but you will see a warning\&.
\fIverbatim\fR
and
\fIwarn\-verbatim\fR
should only be used if you know that no transformation affecting tags or any commit in their history will be performed by you or by fast\-export or fast\-import, or if you do not care that the resulting tag will have an invalid signature\&.
.RE
.PP
\-\-signed\-commits=(verbatim|warn\-verbatim|warn\-strip|strip|abort)
.RS 4
Specify how to handle signed commits\&. Behaves exactly as
\fI\-\-signed\-tags\fR, but for commits\&. Default is
\fIstrip\fR, which is the same as how earlier versions of this command without this option behaved\&.
.sp
When exported, a signature starts with:
.sp
gpgsig <git\-hash\-algo> <signature\-format>
.sp
where <git\-hash\-algo> is the Git object hash so either "sha1" or "sha256", and <signature\-format> is the signature type, so "openpgp", "x509", "ssh" or "unknown"\&.
.sp
For example, an OpenPGP signature on a SHA\-1 commit starts with
\fBgpgsig\fR
\fBsha1\fR
\fBopenpgp\fR, while an SSH signature on a SHA\-256 commit starts with
\fBgpgsig\fR
\fBsha256\fR
\fBssh\fR\&.
.sp
While all the signatures of a commit are exported, an importer may choose to accept only some of them\&. For example
\fBgit-fast-import\fR(1)
currently stores at most one signature per Git hash algorithm in each commit\&.
.if n \{\
.sp
.\}
.RS 4
.it 1 an-trap
.nr an-no-space-flag 1
.nr an-break-flag 1
.br
.ps +1
\fBNote\fR
.ps -1
.br
This is highly experimental and the format of the data stream may change in the future without compatibility guarantees\&.
.sp .5v
.RE
.RE
.PP
\-\-tag\-of\-filtered\-object=(abort|drop|rewrite)
.RS 4
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\&.
.sp
When asking to
\fIabort\fR
(which is the default), this program will die when encountering such a tag\&. With
\fIdrop\fR
it will omit such tags from the output\&. With
\fIrewrite\fR, if the tagged object is a commit, it will rewrite the tag to tag an ancestor commit (via parent rewriting; see
\fBgit-rev-list\fR(1))\&.
.RE
.PP
\-M, \-C
.RS 4
Perform move and/or copy detection, as described in the
\fBgit-diff\fR(1)
manual page, and use it to generate rename and copy commands in the output dump\&.
.sp
Note that earlier versions of this command did not complain and produced incorrect results if you gave these options\&.
.RE
.PP
\-\-export\-marks=<file>
.RS 4
Dumps the internal marks table to <file> when complete\&. Marks are written one per line as
\fB:markid\fR
\fBSHA\-1\fR\&. 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\&.
.RE
.PP
\-\-import\-marks=<file>
.RS 4
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\&.
.RE
.PP
\-\-mark\-tags
.RS 4
In addition to labelling blobs and commits with mark ids, also label tags\&. This is useful in conjunction with
\fB\-\-export\-marks\fR
and
\fB\-\-import\-marks\fR, and is also useful (and necessary) for exporting of nested tags\&. It does not hurt other cases and would be the default, but many fast\-import frontends are not prepared to accept tags with mark identifiers\&.
.sp
Any commits (or tags) 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\&.
.RE
.PP
\-\-fake\-missing\-tagger
.RS 4
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\&.
.RE
.PP
\-\-use\-done\-feature
.RS 4
Start the stream with a
\fIfeature done\fR
stanza, and terminate it with a
\fIdone\fR
command\&.
.RE
.PP
\-\-no\-data
.RS 4
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\&.
.RE
.PP
\-\-full\-tree
.RS 4
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\(cqs first parent)\&.
.RE
.PP
\-\-anonymize
.RS 4
Anonymize the contents of the repository while still retaining the shape of the history and stored tree\&. See the section on
\fBANONYMIZING\fR
below\&.
.RE
.PP
\-\-anonymize\-map=<from>[:<to>]
.RS 4
Convert token
\fI<from>\fR
to
\fI<to>\fR
in the anonymized output\&. If
\fI<to>\fR
is omitted, map
\fI<from>\fR
to itself (i\&.e\&., do not anonymize it)\&. See the section on
\fBANONYMIZING\fR
below\&.
.RE
.PP
\-\-reference\-excluded\-parents
.RS 4
By default, running a command such as
\fBgit\fR
\fBfast\-export\fR
\fBmaster~5\fR\fB\&.\&.\fR\fBmaster\fR
will not include the commit master~5 and will make master~4 no longer have master~5 as a parent (though both the old master~4 and new master~4 will have all the same files)\&. Use \-\-reference\-excluded\-parents to instead have the stream refer to commits in the excluded range of history by their sha1sum\&. Note that the resulting stream can only be used by a repository which already contains the necessary parent commits\&.
.RE
.PP
\-\-show\-original\-ids
.RS 4
Add an extra directive to the output for commits and blobs,
\fBoriginal\-oid\fR
\fI<SHA1SUM>\fR\&. While such directives will likely be ignored by importers such as git\-fast\-import, it may be useful for intermediary filters (e\&.g\&. for rewriting commit messages which refer to older commits, or for stripping blobs by id)\&.
.RE
.PP
\-\-reencode=(yes|no|abort)
.RS 4
Specify how to handle
\fBencoding\fR
header in commit objects\&. When asking to
\fIabort\fR
(which is the default), this program will die when encountering such a commit object\&. With
\fIyes\fR, the commit message will be re\-encoded into UTF\-8\&. With
\fIno\fR, the original encoding will be preserved\&.
.RE
.PP
\-\-refspec
.RS 4
Apply the specified refspec to each ref exported\&. Multiple of them can be specified\&.
.RE
.PP
[<git\-rev\-list\-args>\&...\:]
.RS 4
A list of arguments, acceptable to
\fIgit rev\-parse\fR
and
\fIgit rev\-list\fR, that specifies the specific objects and references to export\&. For example,
\fBmaster~10\fR\fB\&.\&.\fR\fBmaster\fR
causes the current master reference to be exported along with all objects added since its 10th ancestor commit and (unless the \-\-reference\-excluded\-parents option is specified) all files common to master~9 and master~10\&.
.RE
.SH "EXAMPLES"
.sp
.if n \{\
.RS 4
.\}
.nf
$ git fast\-export \-\-all | (cd /empty/repository && git fast\-import)
.fi
.if n \{\
.RE
.\}
.sp
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\&.
.sp
.if n \{\
.RS 4
.\}
.nf
$ git fast\-export master~5\&.\&.master |
        sed "s|refs/heads/master|refs/heads/other|" |
        git fast\-import
.fi
.if n \{\
.RE
.\}
.sp
This makes a new branch called \fIother\fR from \fImaster~5\&.\&.master\fR (i\&.e\&. if \fImaster\fR has linear history, it will take the last 5 commits)\&.
.sp
Note that this assumes that none of the blobs and commit messages referenced by that revision range contains the string \fIrefs/heads/master\fR\&.
.SH "ANONYMIZING"
.sp
If the \fB\-\-anonymize\fR 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\&.
.sp
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\&.
.sp
If you think you have found a git bug, you can start by exporting an anonymized stream of the whole repository:
.sp
.if n \{\
.RS 4
.\}
.nf
$ git fast\-export \-\-anonymize \-\-all >anon\-stream
.fi
.if n \{\
.RE
.\}
.sp
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):
.sp
.if n \{\
.RS 4
.\}
.nf
$ git init anon\-repo
$ cd anon\-repo
$ git fast\-import <\&.\&./anon\-stream
$ \&.\&.\&. test your bug \&.\&.\&.
.fi
.if n \{\
.RE
.\}
.sp
If the anonymized repository shows the bug, it may be worth sharing \fBanon\-stream\fR 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:
.sp
.if n \{\
.RS 4
.\}
.nf
$ perl \-pe \*(Aqs/\ed+/X/g\*(Aq <anon\-stream | sort \-u | less
.fi
.if n \{\
.RE
.\}
.sp
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\&.
.sp
Reproducing some bugs may require referencing particular commits or paths, which becomes challenging after refnames and paths have been anonymized\&. You can ask for a particular token to be left as\-is or mapped to a new value\&. For example, if you have a bug which reproduces with \fBgit\fR \fBrev\-list\fR \fBsensitive\fR \fB\-\-\fR \fBsecret\&.c\fR, you can run:
.sp
.if n \{\
.RS 4
.\}
.nf
$ git fast\-export \-\-anonymize \-\-all \e
      \-\-anonymize\-map=sensitive:foo \e
      \-\-anonymize\-map=secret\&.c:bar\&.c \e
      >stream
.fi
.if n \{\
.RE
.\}
.sp
After importing the stream, you can then run \fBgit\fR \fBrev\-list\fR \fBfoo\fR \fB\-\-\fR \fBbar\&.c\fR in the anonymized repository\&.
.sp
Note that paths and refnames are split into tokens at slash boundaries\&. The command above would anonymize \fBsubdir/secret\&.c\fR as something like \fBpath123/bar\&.c\fR; you could then search for \fBbar\&.c\fR in the anonymized repository to determine the final pathname\&.
.sp
To make referencing the final pathname simpler, you can map each path component; so if you also anonymize \fBsubdir\fR to \fBpublicdir\fR, then the final pathname would be \fBpublicdir/bar\&.c\fR\&.
.SH "LIMITATIONS"
.sp
Since \fIgit fast\-import\fR 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\&.
.SH "SEE ALSO"
.sp
\fBgit-fast-import\fR(1)
.SH "GIT"
.sp
Part of the \fBgit\fR(1) suite