SYNOPSIS
stg [--version | --help] stg [--help <command> | <command> --help] stg <command> [COMMAND OPTIONS] [ARGS]
DESCRIPTION
StGit (Stacked Git) is an application that provides a convenient way to maintain a patch stack on top of a Git branch:
-
The topmost (most recent) commits of a branch are given names. Such a named commit is called a patch.
-
After making changes to the worktree, you can incorporate the changes into an existing patch; this is called refreshing. You may refresh any patch, not just the topmost one.
-
You can pop a patch: temporarily putting it aside, so that the patch below it becomes the topmost patch. Later you may push it onto the stack again. Pushing and popping can be used to reorder patches.
-
You can easily rebase your patch stack on top of any other Git commit. (The base of a patch stack is the most recent Git commit that is not an StGit patch.) For example, if you started making patches on top of someone else’s branch, and that person publishes an updated branch, you can take all your patches and apply them on top of the updated branch.
-
As you would expect, changing what is below a patch can cause that patch to no longer apply cleanly — this can occur when you reorder patches, rebase patches, or refresh a non-topmost patch. StGit uses Git’s rename-aware three-way merge capability to automatically fix up what it can; if it still fails, it lets you manually resolve the conflict just like you would resolve a merge conflict in Git.
-
The patch stack is just some extra metadata attached to regular Git commits, so you can continue to use most Git tools along with StGit.
Typical uses
- Tracking branch
-
Tracking changes from a remote branch, while maintaining local modifications against that branch, possibly with the intent of sending some patches upstream. You can modify your patch stack as much as you want, and when your patches are finally accepted upstream, the permanent recorded Git history will contain just the final sequence of patches, and not the messy sequence of edits that produced them.
- Development branch
-
Even if you have no "upstream" to send patches to, you can use StGit as a convenient way to modify the recent history of a Git branch. For example, instead of first committing change A, then change B, and then A2 to fix A because it wasn’t quite right, you could incorporate the fix directly into A. This way of working results in a much more readable Git history than if you had immortalized every misstep you made on your way to the right solution.
For more information, see the tutorial.
Specifying patches
Many StGit commands take references to StGit patches as arguments. Patches in the stack are identified with short names, each of which must be unique in the stack.
Patches in the current branch are simply referred to by their name.
Some commands allow you to specify a patch in another branch of the
repository; this is done by prefixing the patch name with the branch
name and a colon (e.g. otherbranch:thatpatch
).
Specifying commits
Some StGit commands take Git commits as arguments. StGit accepts all
commit expressions that Git does; and in addition, a patch name
(optionally prefixed by a branch name and a colon) is allowed in this
context. The usual Git modifiers ^ and ~ are also allowed;
e.g., abranch:apatch~2
is the grandparent of the commit that is the
patch apatch
on branch abranch
.
Instead of a patch name, you can say {base}
to refer to the
stack base (the commit just below the bottommost patch); so,
abranch:{base}
is the base of the stack in branch abranch
.
If you need to pass a given StGit reference to a Git command, stg id will convert it to a Git commit id for you.
OPTIONS
The following generic option flags are available. Additional options are available for (and documented with) the different subcommands.
- --version
-
Prints the StGit version, as well as version of other components used, such as Git and Python.
- --help
-
Prints the synopsis and a list of all subcommands. If an StGit subcommand is given, prints the synposis for that subcommand.
STGIT COMMANDS
We divide StGit commands in thematic groups, according to the primary type of object they create or change.
Repository commands
Stack (branch) commands
- stg branch
-
Branch operations: switch, list, create, rename, delete, …
- stg clean
-
Delete the empty patches in the series
- stg commit
-
Permanently store the applied patches into the stack base
- stg float
-
Push patches to the top, even if applied
- stg goto
-
Push or pop patches to the given one
- stg hide
-
Hide a patch in the series
- stg init
-
Initialise the current branch for use with StGIT
- stg log
-
Display or optionally clear the patch changelog
- stg next
-
Print the name of the next patch
- stg patches
-
Show the applied patches modifying a file
- stg pop
-
Pop one or more patches from the stack
- stg prev
-
Print the name of the previous patch
- stg publish
-
(DEPRECATED) Push the stack changes to a merge-friendly branch
- stg pull
-
Pull changes from a remote repository
- stg push
-
Push one or more patches onto the stack
- stg rebase
-
Move the stack base to another point in history
- stg redo
-
Undo the last undo operation
- stg repair
-
Fix StGit metadata if branch was modified with git commands
- stg reset
-
Reset the patch stack to an earlier state
- stg series
-
Print the patch series
- stg sink
-
Send patches deeper down the stack
- stg squash
-
Squash two or more patches into one
- stg top
-
Print the name of the top patch
- stg uncommit
-
Turn regular git commits into StGit patches
- stg undo
-
Undo the last operation
- stg unhide
-
Unhide a hidden patch
Patch commands
- stg delete
-
Delete patches
- stg edit
-
Edit a patch description or diff
- stg export
-
Export patches to a directory
- stg files
-
Show the files modified by a patch (or the current patch)
- stg fold
-
Integrate a GNU diff patch into the current patch
- stg import
-
Import a GNU diff file as a new patch
- stg mail
-
Send a patch or series of patches by e-mail
- stg new
-
Create a new, empty patch
- stg pick
-
Import a patch from a different branch or a commit object
- stg refresh
-
Generate a new commit for the current patch
- stg rename
-
Rename a patch
- stg show
-
Show the commit corresponding to a patch
- stg sync
-
Synchronise patches with a branch or a series
Index/worktree commands
- stg diff
-
Show the tree diff
CONFIGURATION MECHANISM
StGit uses the same configuration mechanism as Git. See git(7) for more details.
TEMPLATES
A number of StGit commands make use of template files to provide
useful default texts to be edited by the user. These <name>.tmpl
template files are searched in the following directories:
-
$GITDIR/
(in practice, the.git/
directory in your repository) -
$HOME/.stgit/templates/
-
/usr/share/stgit/templates/