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+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