stg(1)
======
Yann Dirson <ydirson@altern.org>
-v0.12.1, February 2007
NAME
----
-stg - manage stacks of patches using the GIT content tracker
+stg - Manage stacks of patches using the Git content tracker
SYNOPSIS
--------
DESCRIPTION
-----------
-StGIT (Stacked GIT) is an application providing similar functionality
-to Quilt (i.e. pushing/popping patches to/from a stack), on top of
-GIT. These operations are performed using GIT commands and the patches
-are stored as GIT commit objects, allowing easy merging of the StGIT
-patches into other repositories using standard GIT functionality.
+StGit (Stacked Git) is an application that provides a convenient way
+to maintain a 'patch stack' on top of a Git branch:
-An StGIT stack is a GIT branch with additional information to help
-making changes to individual patches you already committed, rather
-than making changes by adding new commits. It is thus a
-non-forwarding, or rewinding branch: the old head of the branch is
-often not reachable as one of the new head's ancestors.
+ * The topmost (most recent) commits of a branch are given names.
+ Such a named commit is called a 'patch'.
-Typical uses of StGIT include:
+ * 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.
+
+ * 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. StGIT assists in preparing and
- cleaning up patches until they are acceptable upstream, as
- well as maintaining local patches not meant to be sent
- upstream.
+
+ 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.
+
-In such a setup, typically all commits on your branch are StGIT
-patches; the stack base is the branch point where your changes "fork"
-off their parent branch.
+Commands of interest in this workflow are e.g. stgsublink:rebase[] and
+stgsublink:mail[].
Development branch::
- Preparing and testing your commits before publishing them,
- separating your features from unrelated bugfixes collected
- while developping.
+
+ 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.
+
-In such a setup, not all commits on your branch need to be StGIT
-patches; there may be regular GIT commits below your stack base.
+Commands of interest in this workflow are e.g. stgsublink:uncommit[],
+which can be used to move the patch stack base downwards -- i.e., turn
+Git commits into StGit patches after the fact -- and
+stgsublink:commit[], its inverse.
+
+For more information, see htmllink:tutorial.html[the tutorial].
-Patches
-~~~~~~~
+Specifying patches
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-Many StGIT commands take references to StGIT patches as arguments.
+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 stack are just referred to by their name. Some
-commands allow you to specify a patch in another stack of the repository;
-this is done by suffixing the patch name with an '@' sign followed by the
-branch name (eg. 'thispatch@otherbranch').
+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+.
-A number of positions in the stack related to the patch are also
-accessible through '//' suffixes. For example, 'patch//top' is
-equivalent to 'patch', and 'patch//bottom' refers to the commit below
-'patch' (i.e. the patch below, or the stack base if this is the
-bottom-most patch). Similarly '//top.old' and '//bottom.old'
-refer to the previous version of the patch (before the last
-stglink:push[] or stglink:refresh[] operation). When referring to the
-current patch, its name can be omitted (eg. 'currentpatch//bottom.old'
-can be abbreviated as 'bottom.old').
+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,
-stglink:id[] will convert it to a git commit id.
+If you need to pass a given StGit reference to a Git command,
+stglink:id[] will convert it to a Git commit id for you.
OPTIONS
-------
-The following generic option flags are available. Additional options
-are available per-command, and documented in the command-specific
-documentation.
+The following generic option flags are available. Additional options
+are available for (and documented with) the different subcommands.
--version::
- Prints the StGIT suite version that the 'stg' program came
- from, as well as version of other components used, such as GIT
- and Python.
+ 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 commands. If a git
- command is given this option will display the specific help
- for that command.
+ 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
+We divide StGit commands in thematic groups, according to the primary
type of object they create or change.
ifdef::backend-docbook[]
CONFIGURATION MECHANISM
-----------------------
-Starting with 0.12, StGIT uses the same configuration mechanism as
-GIT. See link:git[7] for more details.
+StGit uses the same configuration mechanism as Git. See manlink: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'
+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/
- $HOME/.stgit/templates/
- /usr/share/stgit/templates/
+ . +$GITDIR/+ (in practice, the +.git/+ directory in your repository)
+ . +$HOME/.stgit/templates/+
+ . +/usr/share/stgit/templates/+
~mdw / stgit / commitdiff