git-notes(1)

NAME#

git-notes - Add or inspect object notes

SYNOPSIS#

git notes\n [list [<object>]]
\ngit notes\n add [-f] [--allow-empty] [--[no-]separator | --separator=<paragraph-break>] [--[no-]stripspace] [-F <file> | -m <msg> | (-c | -C) <object>] [<object>]
\ngit notes\n copy [-f] ( --stdin | <from-object> [<to-object>] )
\ngit notes\n append [--allow-empty] [--[no-]separator | --separator=<paragraph-break>] [--[no-]stripspace] [-F <file> | -m <msg> | (-c | -C) <object>] [<object>]
\ngit notes\n edit [--allow-empty] [<object>] [--[no-]stripspace]
\ngit notes\n show [<object>]
\ngit notes\n merge [-v | -q] [-s <strategy> ] <notes-ref>
\ngit notes\n merge --commit [-v | -q]
\ngit notes\n merge --abort [-v | -q]
\ngit notes\n remove [--ignore-missing] [--stdin] [<object>...]
\ngit notes\n prune [-n] [-v]
\ngit notes\n get-ref

DESCRIPTION#

Adds, removes, or reads notes attached to objects, without touching the objects themselves.

By default, notes are saved to and read from refs/notes/commits, but this default can be overridden. See the OPTIONS, CONFIGURATION, and ENVIRONMENT sections below. If this ref does not exist, it will be quietly created when it is first needed to store a note.

A typical use of notes is to supplement a commit message without changing the commit itself. Notes can be shown by git log along with the original commit message. To distinguish these notes from the message stored in the commit object, the notes are indented like the message, after an unindented line saying "Notes (<refname>):" (or "Notes:" for refs/notes/commits).

Notes can also be added to patches prepared with git format-patch by using the --notes option. Such notes are added as a patch commentary after a three dash separator line.

To change which notes are shown by git log, see the "notes.displayRef" discussion in the section called “CONFIGURATION”.

See the "notes.rewrite.<command>" configuration for a way to carry notes across commands that rewrite commits.

SUBCOMMANDS#

list

add

copy

In --stdin mode, take lines in the format

<from-object> SP <to-object> [ SP <rest> ] LF

on standard input, and copy the notes from each <from-object> to its corresponding <to-object>. (The optional <rest> is ignored so that the command can read the input given to the post-rewrite hook.)

append

edit

show

merge

If conflicts arise and a strategy for automatically resolving conflicting notes (see the "NOTES MERGE STRATEGIES" section) is not given, the "manual" resolver is used. This resolver checks out the conflicting notes in a special worktree (.git/NOTES_MERGE_WORKTREE), and instructs the user to manually resolve the conflicts there. When done, the user can either finalize the merge with git notes merge --commit, or abort the merge with git notes merge --abort.

remove

prune

get-ref

OPTIONS#

-f, --force

-m <msg>, --message=<msg>

-F <file>, --file=<file>

-C <object>, --reuse-message=<object>

-c <object>, --reedit-message=<object>

--allow-empty

--[no-]separator, --separator=<paragraph-break>

--[no-]stripspace

--ref <ref>

--ignore-missing

--stdin

-n, --dry-run

-s <strategy>, --strategy=<strategy>

--commit

--abort

-q, --quiet

-v, --verbose

DISCUSSION#

Commit notes are blobs containing extra information about an object (usually information to supplement a commit’s message). These blobs are taken from notes refs. A notes ref is usually a branch which contains "files" whose paths are the object names for the objects they describe, with some directory separators included for performance reasons [1].

Every notes change creates a new commit at the specified notes ref. You can therefore inspect the history of the notes by invoking, e.g., git log -p notes/commits. Currently the commit message only records which operation triggered the update, and the commit authorship is determined according to the usual rules (see git-commit(1)). These details may change in the future.

It is also permitted for a notes ref to point directly to a tree object, in which case the history of the notes can be read with git log -p -g <refname>.

NOTES MERGE STRATEGIES#

The default notes merge strategy is "manual", which checks out conflicting notes in a special work tree for resolving notes conflicts (.git/NOTES_MERGE_WORKTREE), and instructs the user to resolve the conflicts in that work tree. When done, the user can either finalize the merge with git notes merge --commit, or abort the merge with git notes merge --abort.

Users may select an automated merge strategy from among the following using either -s/--strategy option or configuring notes.mergeStrategy accordingly:

"ours" automatically resolves conflicting notes in favor of the local version (i.e. the current notes ref).

"theirs" automatically resolves notes conflicts in favor of the remote version (i.e. the given notes ref being merged into the current notes ref).

"union" automatically resolves notes conflicts by concatenating the local and remote versions.

"cat_sort_uniq" is similar to "union", but in addition to concatenating the local and remote versions, this strategy also sorts the resulting lines, and removes duplicate lines from the result. This is equivalent to applying the "cat | sort | uniq" shell pipeline to the local and remote versions. This strategy is useful if the notes follow a line-based format where one wants to avoid duplicated lines in the merge result. Note that if either the local or remote version contain duplicate lines prior to the merge, these will also be removed by this notes merge strategy.

EXAMPLES#

You can use notes to add annotations with information that was not available at the time a commit was written.

$ git notes add -m 'Tested-by: Johannes Sixt <[email protected]>' 72a144e2
$ git show -s 72a144e
[...]
\n
    Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <[email protected]>
Notes:
\n
    Tested-by: Johannes Sixt <[email protected]>

In principle, a note is a regular Git blob, and any kind of (non-)format is accepted. You can binary-safely create notes from arbitrary files using git hash-object:

$ cc *.c
$ blob=$(git hash-object -w a.out)
$ git notes --ref=built add --allow-empty -C "$blob" HEAD

(You cannot simply use git notes --ref=built add -F a.out HEAD because that is not binary-safe.) Of course, it doesn’t make much sense to display non-text-format notes with git log, so if you use such notes, you’ll probably need to write some special-purpose tools to do something useful with them.

CONFIGURATION#

core.notesRef

Everything above this line in this section isn’t included from the git-config(1) documentation. The content that follows is the same as what’s found there:

notes.mergeStrategy

This setting can be overridden by passing the --strategy option to git-notes(1).

notes.<name>.mergeStrategy

notes.displayRef

This setting can be overridden with the GIT_NOTES_DISPLAY_REF environment variable, which must be a colon separated list of refs or globs.

A warning will be issued for refs that do not exist, but a glob that does not match any refs is silently ignored.

This setting can be disabled by the --no-notes option to the git log family of commands, or by the --notes=<ref> option accepted by those commands.

The effective value of "core.notesRef" (possibly overridden by GIT_NOTES_REF) is also implicitly added to the list of refs to be displayed.

notes.rewrite.<command>

This setting can be overridden with the GIT_NOTES_REWRITE_REF environment variable, which must be a colon separated list of refs or globs.

notes.rewriteMode

This setting can be overridden with the GIT_NOTES_REWRITE_MODE environment variable.

notes.rewriteRef

Does not have a default value; you must configure this variable to enable note rewriting. Set it to refs/notes/commits to enable rewriting for the default commit notes.

Can be overridden with the GIT_NOTES_REWRITE_REF environment variable. See notes.rewrite.<command> above for a further description of its format.

ENVIRONMENT#

GIT_NOTES_REF

GIT_NOTES_DISPLAY_REF

A warning will be issued for refs that do not exist, but a glob that does not match any refs is silently ignored.

GIT_NOTES_REWRITE_MODE

GIT_NOTES_REWRITE_REF

If not set in the environment, the list of notes to copy depends on the notes.rewrite.<command> and notes.rewriteRef settings.

GIT#

Part of the git(1) suite

NOTES#

1.

Permitted pathnames have the form bf/fe/30/.../680d5a...: a sequence of directory names of two hexadecimal digits each followed by a filename with the rest of the object ID.