git-notes(1) - man - phpman

GIT-NOTES(1)                                 Git Manual                                 GIT-NOTES(1)



NAME
       git-notes - Add or inspect object notes

SYNOPSIS
       git notes [list [<object>]]
       git notes add [-f] [--allow-empty] [-F <file> | -m <msg> | (-c | -C) <object>] [<object>]
       git notes copy [-f] ( --stdin | <from-object> [<to-object>] )
       git notes append [--allow-empty] [-F <file> | -m <msg> | (-c | -C) <object>] [<object>]
       git notes edit [--allow-empty] [<object>]
       git notes show [<object>]
       git notes merge [-v | -q] [-s <strategy> ] <notes-ref>
       git notes merge --commit [-v | -q]
       git notes merge --abort [-v | -q]
       git notes remove [--ignore-missing] [--stdin] [<object>...]
       git notes prune [-n] [-v]
       git notes 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" configuration in git-
       log(1).

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

SUBCOMMANDS
       list
           List the notes object for a given object. If no object is given, show a list of all note
           objects and the objects they annotate (in the format "<note object> <annotated object>").
           This is the default subcommand if no subcommand is given.

       add
           Add notes for a given object (defaults to HEAD). Abort if the object already has notes
           (use -f to overwrite existing notes). However, if you’re using add interactively (using
           an editor to supply the notes contents), then - instead of aborting - the existing notes
           will be opened in the editor (like the edit subcommand).

       copy
           Copy the notes for the first object onto the second object (defaults to HEAD). Abort if
           the second object already has notes, or if the first object has none (use -f to overwrite
           existing notes to the second object). This subcommand is equivalent to: git notes add
           [-f] -C $(git notes list <from-object>) <to-object>

           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
           Append to the notes of an existing object (defaults to HEAD). Creates a new notes object
           if needed.

       edit
           Edit the notes for a given object (defaults to HEAD).

       show
           Show the notes for a given object (defaults to HEAD).

       merge
           Merge the given notes ref into the current notes ref. This will try to merge the changes
           made by the given notes ref (called "remote") since the merge-base (if any) into the
           current notes ref (called "local").

           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
           Remove the notes for given objects (defaults to HEAD). When giving zero or one object
           from the command line, this is equivalent to specifying an empty note message to the edit
           subcommand.

       prune
           Remove all notes for non-existing/unreachable objects.

       get-ref
           Print the current notes ref. This provides an easy way to retrieve the current notes ref
           (e.g. from scripts).

OPTIONS
       -f, --force
           When adding notes to an object that already has notes, overwrite the existing notes
           (instead of aborting).

       -m <msg>, --message=<msg>
           Use the given note message (instead of prompting). If multiple -m options are given,
           their values are concatenated as separate paragraphs. Lines starting with # and empty
           lines other than a single line between paragraphs will be stripped out.

       -F <file>, --file=<file>
           Take the note message from the given file. Use - to read the note message from the
           standard input. Lines starting with # and empty lines other than a single line between
           paragraphs will be stripped out.

       -C <object>, --reuse-message=<object>
           Take the given blob object (for example, another note) as the note message. (Use git
           notes copy <object> instead to copy notes between objects.)

       -c <object>, --reedit-message=<object>
           Like -C, but with -c the editor is invoked, so that the user can further edit the note
           message.

       --allow-empty
           Allow an empty note object to be stored. The default behavior is to automatically remove
           empty notes.

       --ref <ref>
           Manipulate the notes tree in <ref>. This overrides GIT_NOTES_REF and the "core.notesRef"
           configuration. The ref specifies the full refname when it begins with refs/notes/; when
           it begins with notes/, refs/ and otherwise refs/notes/ is prefixed to form a full name of
           the ref.

       --ignore-missing
           Do not consider it an error to request removing notes from an object that does not have
           notes attached to it.

       --stdin
           Also read the object names to remove notes from the standard input (there is no reason
           you cannot combine this with object names from the command line).

       -n, --dry-run
           Do not remove anything; just report the object names whose notes would be removed.

       -s <strategy>, --strategy=<strategy>
           When merging notes, resolve notes conflicts using the given strategy. The following
           strategies are recognized: "manual" (default), "ours", "theirs", "union" and
           "cat_sort_uniq". This option overrides the "notes.mergeStrategy" configuration setting.
           See the "NOTES MERGE STRATEGIES" section below for more information on each notes merge
           strategy.

       --commit
           Finalize an in-progress git notes merge. Use this option when you have resolved the
           conflicts that git notes merge stored in .git/NOTES_MERGE_WORKTREE. This amends the
           partial merge commit created by git notes merge (stored in .git/NOTES_MERGE_PARTIAL) by
           adding the notes in .git/NOTES_MERGE_WORKTREE. The notes ref stored in the
           .git/NOTES_MERGE_REF symref is updated to the resulting commit.

       --abort
           Abort/reset an in-progress git notes merge, i.e. a notes merge with conflicts. This
           simply removes all files related to the notes merge.

       -q, --quiet
           When merging notes, operate quietly.

       -v, --verbose
           When merging notes, be more verbose. When pruning notes, report all object names whose
           notes are removed.

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 <j6t AT kdbg.org>' 72a144e2
           $ git show -s 72a144e
           [...]
               Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster AT pobox.com>

           Notes:
               Tested-by: Johannes Sixt <j6t AT kdbg.org>


       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
           Notes ref to read and manipulate instead of refs/notes/commits. Must be an unabbreviated
           ref name. This setting can be overridden through the environment and command line.

       notes.mergeStrategy
           Which merge strategy to choose by default when resolving notes conflicts. Must be one of
           manual, ours, theirs, union, or cat_sort_uniq. Defaults to manual. See "NOTES MERGE
           STRATEGIES" section above for more information on each strategy.

           This setting can be overridden by passing the --strategy option.

       notes.<name>.mergeStrategy
           Which merge strategy to choose when doing a notes merge into refs/notes/<name>. This
           overrides the more general "notes.mergeStrategy". See the "NOTES MERGE STRATEGIES"
           section above for more information on each available strategy.

       notes.displayRef
           Which ref (or refs, if a glob or specified more than once), in addition to the default
           set by core.notesRef or GIT_NOTES_REF, to read notes from when showing commit messages
           with the git log family of commands. This setting can be overridden on the command line
           or by the GIT_NOTES_DISPLAY_REF environment variable. See git-log(1).

       notes.rewrite.<command>
           When rewriting commits with <command> (currently amend or rebase), if this variable is
           false, git will not copy notes from the original to the rewritten commit. Defaults to
           true. See also "notes.rewriteRef" below.

           This setting can be overridden by the GIT_NOTES_REWRITE_REF environment variable.

       notes.rewriteMode
           When copying notes during a rewrite, what to do if the target commit already has a note.
           Must be one of overwrite, concatenate, cat_sort_uniq, or ignore. Defaults to concatenate.

           This setting can be overridden with the GIT_NOTES_REWRITE_MODE environment variable.

       notes.rewriteRef
           When copying notes during a rewrite, specifies the (fully qualified) ref whose notes
           should be copied. May be a glob, in which case notes in all matching refs will be copied.
           You may also specify this configuration several times.

           Does not have a default value; you must configure this variable to enable note rewriting.

           Can be overridden with the GIT_NOTES_REWRITE_REF environment variable.

ENVIRONMENT
       GIT_NOTES_REF
           Which ref to manipulate notes from, instead of refs/notes/commits. This overrides the
           core.notesRef setting.

       GIT_NOTES_DISPLAY_REF
           Colon-delimited list of refs or globs indicating which refs, in addition to the default
           from core.notesRef or GIT_NOTES_REF, to read notes from when showing commit messages.
           This overrides the notes.displayRef setting.

           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
           When copying notes during a rewrite, what to do if the target commit already has a note.
           Must be one of overwrite, concatenate, cat_sort_uniq, or ignore. This overrides the
           core.rewriteMode setting.

       GIT_NOTES_REWRITE_REF
           When rewriting commits, which notes to copy from the original to the rewritten commit.
           Must be a colon-delimited list of refs or globs.

           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.




Git 2.34.1                                   02/26/2026                                 GIT-NOTES(1)