man > GIT-AM(1)

GIT-AM(1)                                    Git Manual                                    GIT-AM(1)

NAME
       git-am - Apply a series of patches from a mailbox

SYNOPSIS
       git am [--signoff] [--keep] [--[no-]keep-cr] [--[no-]utf8] [--no-verify]
                [--[no-]3way] [--interactive] [--committer-date-is-author-date]
                [--ignore-date] [--ignore-space-change | --ignore-whitespace]
                [--whitespace=<action>] [-C<n>] [-p<n>] [--directory=<dir>]
                [--exclude=<path>] [--include=<path>] [--reject] [-q | --quiet]
                [--[no-]scissors] [-S[<keyid>]] [--patch-format=<format>]
                [--quoted-cr=<action>]
                [--empty=(stop|drop|keep)]
                [(<mbox> | <Maildir>)...]
       git am (--continue | --skip | --abort | --quit | --show-current-patch[=(diff|raw)] | --allow-empty)


DESCRIPTION
       Splits mail messages in a mailbox into commit log messages, authorship information, and
       patches, and applies them to the current branch. You could think of it as a reverse operation
       of git-format-patch(1) run on a branch with a straight history without merges.

OPTIONS
       (<mbox>|<Maildir>)...
           The list of mailbox files to read patches from. If you do not supply this argument, the
           command reads from the standard input. If you supply directories, they will be treated as
           Maildirs.

       -s, --signoff
           Add a Signed-off-by trailer to the commit message, using the committer identity of
           yourself. See the signoff option in git-commit(1) for more information.

       -k, --keep
           Pass -k flag to git mailinfo (see git-mailinfo(1)).

       --keep-non-patch
           Pass -b flag to git mailinfo (see git-mailinfo(1)).

       --[no-]keep-cr
           With --keep-cr, call git mailsplit (see git-mailsplit(1)) with the same option, to
           prevent it from stripping CR at the end of lines.  am.keepcr configuration variable can
           be used to specify the default behaviour.  --no-keep-cr is useful to override am.keepcr.

       -c, --scissors
           Remove everything in body before a scissors line (see git-mailinfo(1)). Can be activated
           by default using the mailinfo.scissors configuration variable.

       --no-scissors
           Ignore scissors lines (see git-mailinfo(1)).

       --quoted-cr=<action>
           This flag will be passed down to git mailinfo (see git-mailinfo(1)).

       --empty=(stop|drop|keep)
           By default, or when the option is set to stop, the command errors out on an input e-mail
           message lacking a patch and stops in the middle of the current am session. When this
           option is set to drop, skip such an e-mail message instead. When this option is set to
           keep, create an empty commit, recording the contents of the e-mail message as its log.

       -m, --message-id
           Pass the -m flag to git mailinfo (see git-mailinfo(1)), so that the Message-ID header is
           added to the commit message. The am.messageid configuration variable can be used to
           specify the default behaviour.

       --no-message-id
           Do not add the Message-ID header to the commit message.  no-message-id is useful to
           override am.messageid.

       -q, --quiet
           Be quiet. Only print error messages.

       -u, --utf8
           Pass -u flag to git mailinfo (see git-mailinfo(1)). The proposed commit log message taken
           from the e-mail is re-coded into UTF-8 encoding (configuration variable
           i18n.commitEncoding can be used to specify the project’s preferred encoding if it is not
           UTF-8).

           This was optional in prior versions of git, but now it is the default. You can use
           --no-utf8 to override this.

       --no-utf8
           Pass -n flag to git mailinfo (see git-mailinfo(1)).

       -3, --3way, --no-3way
           When the patch does not apply cleanly, fall back on 3-way merge if the patch records the
           identity of blobs it is supposed to apply to and we have those blobs available locally.
           --no-3way can be used to override am.threeWay configuration variable. For more
           information, see am.threeWay in git-config(1).

       --rerere-autoupdate, --no-rerere-autoupdate
           After the rerere mechanism reuses a recorded resolution on the current conflict to update
           the files in the working tree, allow it to also update the index with the result of
           resolution.  --no-rerere-autoupdate is a good way to double-check what rerere did and
           catch potential mismerges, before committing the result to the index with a separate git
           add.

       --ignore-space-change, --ignore-whitespace, --whitespace=<action>, -C<n>, -p<n>,
       --directory=<dir>, --exclude=<path>, --include=<path>, --reject
           These flags are passed to the git apply (see git-apply(1)) program that applies the
           patch.

       --patch-format
           By default the command will try to detect the patch format automatically. This option
           allows the user to bypass the automatic detection and specify the patch format that the
           patch(es) should be interpreted as. Valid formats are mbox, mboxrd, stgit, stgit-series,
           and hg.

       -i, --interactive
           Run interactively.

       -n, --no-verify
           By default, the pre-applypatch and applypatch-msg hooks are run. When any of --no-verify
           or -n is given, these are bypassed. See also githooks(5).

       --committer-date-is-author-date
           By default the command records the date from the e-mail message as the commit author
           date, and uses the time of commit creation as the committer date. This allows the user to
           lie about the committer date by using the same value as the author date.

       --ignore-date
           By default the command records the date from the e-mail message as the commit author
           date, and uses the time of commit creation as the committer date. This allows the user to
           lie about the author date by using the same value as the committer date.

       --skip
           Skip the current patch. This is only meaningful when restarting an aborted patch.

       -S[<keyid>], --gpg-sign[=<keyid>], --no-gpg-sign
           GPG-sign commits. The keyid argument is optional and defaults to the committer identity;
           if specified, it must be stuck to the option without a space.  --no-gpg-sign is useful to
           countermand both commit.gpgSign configuration variable, and earlier --gpg-sign.

       --continue, -r, --resolved
           After a patch failure (e.g. attempting to apply conflicting patch), the user has applied
           it by hand and the index file stores the result of the application. Make a commit using
           the authorship and commit log extracted from the e-mail message and the current index
           file, and continue.

       --resolvemsg=<msg>
           When a patch failure occurs, <msg> will be printed to the screen before exiting. This
           overrides the standard message informing you to use --continue or --skip to handle the
           failure. This is solely for internal use between git rebase and git am.

       --abort
           Restore the original branch and abort the patching operation. Revert the contents of
           files involved in the am operation to their pre-am state.

       --quit
           Abort the patching operation but keep HEAD and the index untouched.

       --show-current-patch[=(diff|raw)]
           Show the message at which git am has stopped due to conflicts. If raw is specified, show
           the raw contents of the e-mail message; if diff, show the diff portion only. Defaults to
           raw.

       --allow-empty
           After a patch failure on an input e-mail message lacking a patch, create an empty commit
           with the contents of the e-mail message as its log message.

DISCUSSION
       The commit author name is taken from the "From: " line of the message, and commit author date
       is taken from the "Date: " line of the message. The "Subject: " line is used as the title of
       the commit, after stripping common prefix "[PATCH <anything>]". The "Subject: " line is
       supposed to concisely describe what the commit is about in one line of text.

       "From: ", "Date: ", and "Subject: " lines starting the body override the respective commit
       author name and title values taken from the headers.

       The commit message is formed by the title taken from the "Subject: ", a blank line and the
       body of the message up to where the patch begins. Excess whitespace at the end of each line
       is automatically stripped.

       The patch is expected to be inline, directly following the message. Any line that is of the
       form:

       •   three-dashes and end-of-line, or

       •   a line that begins with "diff -", or

       •   a line that begins with "Index: "

       is taken as the beginning of a patch, and the commit log message is terminated before the
       first occurrence of such a line.

       When initially invoking git am, you give it the names of the mailboxes to process. Upon
       seeing the first patch that does not apply, it aborts in the middle. You can recover from
       this in one of two ways:

        1. skip the current patch by re-running the command with the --skip option.

        2. hand resolve the conflict in the working directory, and update the index file to bring it
           into a state that the patch should have produced. Then run the command with the
           --continue option.

       The command refuses to process new mailboxes until the current operation is finished, so if
       you decide to start over from scratch, run git am --abort before running the command with
       mailbox names.

       Before any patches are applied, ORIG_HEAD is set to the tip of the current branch. This is
       useful if you have problems with multiple commits, like running git am on the wrong branch or
       an error in the commits that is more easily fixed by changing the mailbox (e.g. errors in the
       "From:" lines).

HOOKS
       This command can run applypatch-msg, pre-applypatch, and post-applypatch hooks. See
       githooks(5) for more information.

CONFIGURATION
       Everything below this line in this section is selectively included from the git-config(1)
       documentation. The content is the same as what’s found there:

       am.keepcr
           If true, git-am will call git-mailsplit for patches in mbox format with parameter
           --keep-cr. In this case git-mailsplit will not remove \r from lines ending with \r\n. Can
           be overridden by giving --no-keep-cr from the command line. See git-am(1), git-
           mailsplit(1).

       am.threeWay
           By default, git am will fail if the patch does not apply cleanly. When set to true, this
           setting tells git am to fall back on 3-way merge if the patch records the identity of
           blobs it is supposed to apply to and we have those blobs available locally (equivalent to
           giving the --3way option from the command line). Defaults to false. See git-am(1).

SEE ALSO
       git-apply(1), git-format-patch(1).

GIT
       Part of the git(1) suite

Git 2.43.0                                   07/02/2025                                    GIT-AM(1)