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+git-fast-import(1)
+==================
+
+NAME
+----
+git-fast-import - Backend for fast Git data importers.
+
+
+SYNOPSIS
+--------
+frontend | 'git-fast-import' [options]
+
+DESCRIPTION
+-----------
+This program is usually not what the end user wants to run directly.
+Most end users want to use one of the existing frontend programs,
+which parses a specific type of foreign source and feeds the contents
+stored there to git-fast-import (gfi).
+
+gfi reads a mixed command/data stream from standard input and
+writes one or more packfiles directly into the current repository.
+When EOF is received on standard input, fast import writes out
+updated branch and tag refs, fully updating the current repository
+with the newly imported data.
+
+The gfi backend itself can import into an empty repository (one that
+has already been initialized by gitlink:git-init[1]) or incrementally
+update an existing populated repository.  Whether or not incremental
+imports are supported from a particular foreign source depends on
+the frontend program in use.
+
+
+OPTIONS
+-------
+--max-pack-size=<n>::
+	Maximum size of each output packfile, expressed in MiB.
+	The default is 4096 (4 GiB) as that is the maximum allowed
+	packfile size (due to file format limitations). Some
+	importers may wish to lower this, such as to ensure the
+	resulting packfiles fit on CDs.
+
+--depth=<n>::
+	Maximum delta depth, for blob and tree deltification.
+	Default is 10.
+
+--active-branches=<n>::
+	Maximum number of branches to maintain active at once.
+	See ``Memory Utilization'' below for details.  Default is 5.
+
+--export-marks=<file>::
+	Dumps the internal marks table to <file> when complete.
+	Marks are written one per line as `:markid SHA-1`.
+	Frontends can use this file to validate imports after they
+	have been completed.
+
+--branch-log=<file>::
+	Records every tag and commit made to a log file.  (This file
+	can be quite verbose on large imports.)  This particular
+	option has been primarily intended to facilitate debugging
+	gfi and has limited usefulness in other contexts.  It may
+	be removed in future versions.
+
+
+Performance
+-----------
+The design of gfi allows it to import large projects in a minimum
+amount of memory usage and processing time.  Assuming the frontend
+is able to keep up with gfi and feed it a constant stream of data,
+import times for projects holding 10+ years of history and containing
+100,000+ individual commits are generally completed in just 1-2
+hours on quite modest (~$2,000 USD) hardware.
+
+Most bottlenecks appear to be in foreign source data access (the
+source just cannot extract revisions fast enough) or disk IO (gfi
+writes as fast as the disk will take the data).  Imports will run
+faster if the source data is stored on a different drive than the
+destination Git repository (due to less IO contention).
+
+
+Development Cost
+----------------
+A typical frontend for gfi tends to weigh in at approximately 200
+lines of Perl/Python/Ruby code.  Most developers have been able to
+create working importers in just a couple of hours, even though it
+is their first exposure to gfi, and sometimes even to Git.  This is
+an ideal situation, given that most conversion tools are throw-away
+(use once, and never look back).
+
+
+Parallel Operation
+------------------
+Like `git-push` or `git-fetch`, imports handled by gfi are safe to
+run alongside parallel `git repack -a -d` or `git gc` invocations,
+or any other Git operation (including `git prune`, as loose objects
+are never used by gfi).
+
+However, gfi does not lock the branch or tag refs it is actively
+importing.  After EOF, during its ref update phase, gfi blindly
+overwrites each imported branch or tag ref.  Consequently it is not
+safe to modify refs that are currently being used by a running gfi
+instance, as work could be lost when gfi overwrites the refs.
+
+
+Technical Discussion
+--------------------
+gfi tracks a set of branches in memory.  Any branch can be created
+or modified at any point during the import process by sending a
+`commit` command on the input stream.  This design allows a frontend
+program to process an unlimited number of branches simultaneously,
+generating commits in the order they are available from the source
+data.  It also simplifies the frontend programs considerably.
+
+gfi does not use or alter the current working directory, or any
+file within it.  (It does however update the current Git repository,
+as referenced by `GIT_DIR`.)  Therefore an import frontend may use
+the working directory for its own purposes, such as extracting file
+revisions from the foreign source.  This ignorance of the working
+directory also allows gfi to run very quickly, as it does not
+need to perform any costly file update operations when switching
+between branches.
+
+Input Format
+------------
+With the exception of raw file data (which Git does not interpret)
+the gfi input format is text (ASCII) based.  This text based
+format simplifies development and debugging of frontend programs,
+especially when a higher level language such as Perl, Python or
+Ruby is being used.
+
+gfi is very strict about its input.  Where we say SP below we mean
+*exactly* one space.  Likewise LF means one (and only one) linefeed.
+Supplying additional whitespace characters will cause unexpected
+results, such as branch names or file names with leading or trailing
+spaces in their name, or early termination of gfi when it encounters
+unexpected input.
+
+Commands
+~~~~~~~~
+gfi accepts several commands to update the current repository
+and control the current import process.  More detailed discussion
+(with examples) of each command follows later.
+
+`commit`::
+	Creates a new branch or updates an existing branch by
+	creating a new commit and updating the branch to point at
+	the newly created commit.
+
+`tag`::
+	Creates an annotated tag object from an existing commit or
+	branch.  Lightweight tags are not supported by this command,
+	as they are not recommended for recording meaningful points
+	in time.
+
+`reset`::
+	Reset an existing branch (or a new branch) to a specific
+	revision.  This command must be used to change a branch to
+	a specific revision without making a commit on it.
+
+`blob`::
+	Convert raw file data into a blob, for future use in a
+	`commit` command.  This command is optional and is not
+	needed to perform an import.
+
+`checkpoint`::
+	Forces gfi to close the current packfile, generate its
+	unique SHA-1 checksum and index, and start a new packfile.
+	This command is optional and is not needed to perform
+	an import.
+
+`commit`
+~~~~~~~~
+Create or update a branch with a new commit, recording one logical
+change to the project.
+
+....
+	'commit' SP <ref> LF
+	mark?
+	('author' SP <name> SP LT <email> GT SP <time> SP <tz> LF)?
+	'committer' SP <name> SP LT <email> GT SP <time> SP <tz> LF
+	data
+	('from' SP <committish> LF)?
+	('merge' SP <committish> LF)?
+	(filemodify | filedelete)*
+	LF
+....
+
+where `<ref>` is the name of the branch to make the commit on.
+Typically branch names are prefixed with `refs/heads/` in
+Git, so importing the CVS branch symbol `RELENG-1_0` would use
+`refs/heads/RELENG-1_0` for the value of `<ref>`.  The value of
+`<ref>` must be a valid refname in Git.  As `LF` is not valid in
+a Git refname, no quoting or escaping syntax is supported here.
+
+A `mark` command may optionally appear, requesting gfi to save a
+reference to the newly created commit for future use by the frontend
+(see below for format).  It is very common for frontends to mark
+every commit they create, thereby allowing future branch creation
+from any imported commit.
+
+The `data` command following `committer` must supply the commit
+message (see below for `data` command syntax).  To import an empty
+commit message use a 0 length data.  Commit messages are free-form
+and are not interpreted by Git.  Currently they must be encoded in
+UTF-8, as gfi does not permit other encodings to be specified.
+
+Zero or more `filemodify` and `filedelete` commands may be
+included to update the contents of the branch prior to the commit.
+These commands can be supplied in any order, gfi is not sensitive
+to pathname or operation ordering.
+
+`author`
+^^^^^^^^
+An `author` command may optionally appear, if the author information
+might differ from the committer information.  If `author` is omitted
+then gfi will automatically use the committer's information for
+the author portion of the commit.  See below for a description of
+the fields in `author`, as they are identical to `committer`.
+
+`committer`
+^^^^^^^^^^^
+The `committer` command indicates who made this commit, and when
+they made it.
+
+Here `<name>` is the person's display name (for example
+``Com M Itter'') and `<email>` is the person's email address
+(``cm@example.com'').  `LT` and `GT` are the literal less-than (\x3c)
+and greater-than (\x3e) symbols.  These are required to delimit
+the email address from the other fields in the line.  Note that
+`<name>` is free-form and may contain any sequence of bytes, except
+`LT` and `LF`.  It is typically UTF-8 encoded.
+
+The time of the change is specified by `<time>` as the number of
+seconds since the UNIX epoc (midnight, Jan 1, 1970, UTC) and is
+written in base-10 notation using US-ASCII digits.  The committer's
+timezone is specified by `<tz>` as a positive or negative offset
+from UTC, in minutes.  For example EST would be expressed in `<tz>`
+by ``-0500''.
+
+`from`
+^^^^^^
+Only valid for the first commit made on this branch by this
+gfi process.  The `from` command is used to specify the commit
+to initialize this branch from.  This revision will be the first
+ancestor of the new commit.
+
+Omitting the `from` command in the first commit of a new branch will
+cause gfi to create that commit with no ancestor. This tends to be
+desired only for the initial commit of a project.  Omitting the
+`from` command on existing branches is required, as the current
+commit on that branch is automatically assumed to be the first
+ancestor of the new commit.
+
+As `LF` is not valid in a Git refname or SHA-1 expression, no
+quoting or escaping syntax is supported within `<committish>`.
+
+Here `<committish>` is any of the following:
+
+* The name of an existing branch already in gfi's internal branch
+  table.  If gfi doesn't know the name, its treated as a SHA-1
+  expression.
+
+* A mark reference, `:<idnum>`, where `<idnum>` is the mark number.
++
+The reason gfi uses `:` to denote a mark reference is this character
+is not legal in a Git branch name.  The leading `:` makes it easy
+to distingush between the mark 42 (`:42`) and the branch 42 (`42`
+or `refs/heads/42`), or an abbreviated SHA-1 which happened to
+consist only of base-10 digits.
++
+Marks must be declared (via `mark`) before they can be used.
+
+* A complete 40 byte or abbreviated commit SHA-1 in hex.
+
+* Any valid Git SHA-1 expression that resolves to a commit.  See
+  ``SPECIFYING REVISIONS'' in gitlink:git-rev-parse[1] for details.
+
+The special case of restarting an incremental import from the
+current branch value should be written as:
+----
+	from refs/heads/branch^0
+----
+The `^0` suffix is necessary as gfi does not permit a branch to
+start from itself, and the branch is created in memory before the
+`from` command is even read from the input.  Adding `^0` will force
+gfi to resolve the commit through Git's revision parsing library,
+rather than its internal branch table, thereby loading in the
+existing value of the branch.
+
+`merge`
+^^^^^^^
+Includes one additional ancestor commit, and makes the current
+commit a merge commit.  An unlimited number of `merge` commands per
+commit are permitted by gfi, thereby establishing an n-way merge.
+However Git's other tools never create commits with more than 15
+additional ancestors (forming a 16-way merge).  For this reason
+it is suggested that frontends do not use more than 15 `merge`
+commands per commit.
+
+Here `<committish>` is any of the commit specification expressions
+also accepted by `from` (see above).
+
+`filemodify`
+^^^^^^^^^^
+Included in a `commit` command to add a new file or change the
+content of an existing file.  This command has two different means
+of specifying the content of the file.
+
+External data format::
+	The data content for the file was already supplied by a prior
+	`blob` command.  The frontend just needs to connect it.
++
+....
+	'M' SP <mode> SP <dataref> SP <path> LF
+....
++
+Here `<dataref>` can be either a mark reference (`:<idnum>`)
+set by a prior `blob` command, or a full 40-byte SHA-1 of an
+existing Git blob object.
+
+Inline data format::
+	The data content for the file has not been supplied yet.
+	The frontend wants to supply it as part of this modify
+	command.
++
+....
+	'M' SP <mode> SP 'inline' SP <path> LF
+	data
+....
++
+See below for a detailed description of the `data` command.
+
+In both formats `<mode>` is the type of file entry, specified
+in octal.  Git only supports the following modes:
+
+* `100644` or `644`: A normal (not-executable) file.  The majority
+  of files in most projects use this mode.  If in doubt, this is
+  what you want.
+* `100755` or `755`: A normal, but executable, file.
+* `140000`: A symlink, the content of the file will be the link target.
+
+In both formats `<path>` is the complete path of the file to be added
+(if not already existing) or modified (if already existing).
+
+A `<path>` string must use UNIX-style directory seperators (forward
+slash `/`), may contain any byte other than `LF`, and must not
+start with double quote (`"`).
+
+If an `LF` or double quote must be encoded into `<path>` shell-style
+quoting should be used, e.g. `"path/with\n and \" in it"`.
+
+The value of `<path>` must be in canoncial form. That is it must not:
+
+* contain an empty directory component (e.g. `foo//bar` is invalid),
+* end with a directory seperator (e.g. `foo/` is invalid),
+* start with a directory seperator (e.g. `/foo` is invalid),
+* contain the special component `.` or `..` (e.g. `foo/./bar` and
+  `foo/../bar` are invalid).
+
+It is recommended that `<path>` always be encoded using UTF-8.
+
+
+`filedelete`
+^^^^^^^^^^
+Included in a `commit` command to remove a file from the branch.
+If the file removal makes its directory empty, the directory will
+be automatically removed too.  This cascades up the tree until the
+first non-empty directory or the root is reached.
+
+....
+	'D' SP <path> LF
+....
+
+here `<path>` is the complete path of the file to be removed.
+See `filemodify` above for a detailed description of `<path>`.
+
+`mark`
+~~~~~~
+Arranges for gfi to save a reference to the current object, allowing
+the frontend to recall this object at a future point in time, without
+knowing its SHA-1.  Here the current object is the object creation
+command the `mark` command appears within.  This can be `commit`,
+`tag`, and `blob`, but `commit` is the most common usage.
+
+....
+	'mark' SP ':' <idnum> LF
+....
+
+where `<idnum>` is the number assigned by the frontend to this mark.
+The value of `<idnum>` is expressed in base 10 notation using
+US-ASCII digits.  The value 0 is reserved and cannot be used as
+a mark.  Only values greater than or equal to 1 may be used as marks.
+
+New marks are created automatically.  Existing marks can be moved
+to another object simply by reusing the same `<idnum>` in another
+`mark` command.
+
+`tag`
+~~~~~
+Creates an annotated tag referring to a specific commit.  To create
+lightweight (non-annotated) tags see the `reset` command below.
+
+....
+	'tag' SP <name> LF
+	'from' SP <committish> LF
+	'tagger' SP <name> SP LT <email> GT SP <time> SP <tz> LF
+	data
+	LF
+....
+
+where `<name>` is the name of the tag to create.
+
+Tag names are automatically prefixed with `refs/tags/` when stored
+in Git, so importing the CVS branch symbol `RELENG-1_0-FINAL` would
+use just `RELENG-1_0-FINAL` for `<name>`, and gfi will write the
+corresponding ref as `refs/tags/RELENG-1_0-FINAL`.
+
+The value of `<name>` must be a valid refname in Git and therefore
+may contain forward slashes.  As `LF` is not valid in a Git refname,
+no quoting or escaping syntax is supported here.
+
+The `from` command is the same as in the `commit` command; see
+above for details.
+
+The `tagger` command uses the same format as `committer` within
+`commit`; again see above for details.
+
+The `data` command following `tagger` must supply the annotated tag
+message (see below for `data` command syntax).  To import an empty
+tag message use a 0 length data.  Tag messages are free-form and are
+not interpreted by Git.  Currently they must be encoded in UTF-8,
+as gfi does not permit other encodings to be specified.
+
+Signing annotated tags during import from within gfi is not
+supported.  Trying to include your own PGP/GPG signature is not
+recommended, as the frontend does not (easily) have access to the
+complete set of bytes which normally goes into such a signature.
+If signing is required, create lightweight tags from within gfi with
+`reset`, then create the annotated versions of those tags offline
+with the standard gitlink:git-tag[1] process.
+
+`reset`
+~~~~~~~
+Creates (or recreates) the named branch, optionally starting from
+a specific revision.  The reset command allows a frontend to issue
+a new `from` command for an existing branch, or to create a new
+branch from an existing commit without creating a new commit.
+
+....
+	'reset' SP <ref> LF
+	('from' SP <committish> LF)?
+	LF
+....
+
+For a detailed description of `<ref>` and `<committish>` see above
+under `commit` and `from`.
+
+The `reset` command can also be used to create lightweight
+(non-annotated) tags.  For example:
+
+====
+	reset refs/tags/938
+	from :938
+====
+
+would create the lightweight tag `refs/tags/938` referring to
+whatever commit mark `:938` references.
+
+`blob`
+~~~~~~
+Requests writing one file revision to the packfile.  The revision
+is not connected to any commit; this connection must be formed in
+a subsequent `commit` command by referencing the blob through an
+assigned mark.
+
+....
+	'blob' LF
+	mark?
+	data
+....
+
+The mark command is optional here as some frontends have chosen
+to generate the Git SHA-1 for the blob on their own, and feed that
+directly to `commit`.  This is typically more work than its worth
+however, as marks are inexpensive to store and easy to use.
+
+`data`
+~~~~~~
+Supplies raw data (for use as blob/file content, commit messages, or
+annotated tag messages) to gfi.  Data can be supplied using an exact
+byte count or delimited with a terminating line.  Real frontends
+intended for production-quality conversions should always use the
+exact byte count format, as it is more robust and performs better.
+The delimited format is intended primarily for testing gfi.
+
+Exact byte count format:
+
+....
+	'data' SP <count> LF
+	<raw> LF
+....
+
+where `<count>` is the exact number of bytes appearing within
+`<raw>`.  The value of `<count>` is expressed in base 10 notation
+using US-ASCII digits.  The `LF` on either side of `<raw>` is not
+included in `<count>` and will not be included in the imported data.
+
+Delimited format:
+
+....
+	'data' SP '<<' <delim> LF
+	<raw> LF
+	<delim> LF
+....
+
+where `<delim>` is the chosen delimiter string.  The string `<delim>`
+must not appear on a line by itself within `<raw>`, as otherwise
+gfi will think the data ends earlier than it really does.  The `LF`
+immediately trailing `<raw>` is part of `<raw>`.  This is one of
+the limitations of the delimited format, it is impossible to supply
+a data chunk which does not have an LF as its last byte.
+
+`checkpoint`
+~~~~~~~~~~~~
+Forces gfi to close the current packfile and start a new one.
+As this requires a significant amount of CPU time and disk IO
+(to compute the overall pack SHA-1 checksum and generate the
+corresponding index file) it can easily take several minutes for
+a single `checkpoint` command to complete.
+
+....
+	'checkpoint' LF
+	LF
+....
+
+Packfile Optimization
+---------------------
+When packing a blob gfi always attempts to deltify against the last
+blob written.  Unless specifically arranged for by the frontend,
+this will probably not be a prior version of the same file, so the
+generated delta will not be the smallest possible.  The resulting
+packfile will be compressed, but will not be optimal.
+
+Frontends which have efficient access to all revisions of a
+single file (for example reading an RCS/CVS ,v file) can choose
+to supply all revisions of that file as a sequence of consecutive
+`blob` commands.  This allows gfi to deltify the different file
+revisions against each other, saving space in the final packfile.
+Marks can be used to later identify individual file revisions during
+a sequence of `commit` commands.
+
+The packfile(s) created by gfi do not encourage good disk access
+patterns.  This is caused by gfi writing the data in the order
+it is received on standard input, while Git typically organizes
+data within packfiles to make the most recent (current tip) data
+appear before historical data.  Git also clusters commits together,
+speeding up revision traversal through better cache locality.
+
+For this reason it is strongly recommended that users repack the
+repository with `git repack -a -d` after gfi completes, allowing
+Git to reorganize the packfiles for faster data access.  If blob
+deltas are suboptimal (see above) then also adding the `-f` option
+to force recomputation of all deltas can significantly reduce the
+final packfile size (30-50% smaller can be quite typical).
+
+Memory Utilization
+------------------
+There are a number of factors which affect how much memory gfi
+requires to perform an import.  Like critical sections of core
+Git, gfi uses its own memory allocators to ammortize any overheads
+associated with malloc.  In practice gfi tends to ammoritize any
+malloc overheads to 0, due to its use of large block allocations.
+
+per object
+~~~~~~~~~~
+gfi maintains an in-memory structure for every object written in
+this execution.  On a 32 bit system the structure is 32 bytes,
+on a 64 bit system the structure is 40 bytes (due to the larger
+pointer sizes).  Objects in the table are not deallocated until
+gfi terminates.  Importing 2 million objects on a 32 bit system
+will require approximately 64 MiB of memory.
+
+The object table is actually a hashtable keyed on the object name
+(the unique SHA-1).  This storage configuration allows gfi to reuse
+an existing or already written object and avoid writing duplicates
+to the output packfile.  Duplicate blobs are surprisingly common
+in an import, typically due to branch merges in the source.
+
+per mark
+~~~~~~~~
+Marks are stored in a sparse array, using 1 pointer (4 bytes or 8
+bytes, depending on pointer size) per mark.  Although the array
+is sparse, frontends are still strongly encouraged to use marks
+between 1 and n, where n is the total number of marks required for
+this import.
+
+per branch
+~~~~~~~~~~
+Branches are classified as active and inactive.  The memory usage
+of the two classes is significantly different.
+
+Inactive branches are stored in a structure which uses 96 or 120
+bytes (32 bit or 64 bit systems, respectively), plus the length of
+the branch name (typically under 200 bytes), per branch.  gfi will
+easily handle as many as 10,000 inactive branches in under 2 MiB
+of memory.
+
+Active branches have the same overhead as inactive branches, but
+also contain copies of every tree that has been recently modified on
+that branch.  If subtree `include` has not been modified since the
+branch became active, its contents will not be loaded into memory,
+but if subtree `src` has been modified by a commit since the branch
+became active, then its contents will be loaded in memory.
+
+As active branches store metadata about the files contained on that
+branch, their in-memory storage size can grow to a considerable size
+(see below).
+
+gfi automatically moves active branches to inactive status based on
+a simple least-recently-used algorithm.  The LRU chain is updated on
+each `commit` command.  The maximum number of active branches can be
+increased or decreased on the command line with `--active-branches=`.
+
+per active tree
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+Trees (aka directories) use just 12 bytes of memory on top of the
+memory required for their entries (see ``per active file'' below).
+The cost of a tree is virtually 0, as its overhead ammortizes out
+over the individual file entries.
+
+per active file entry
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+Files (and pointers to subtrees) within active trees require 52 or 64
+bytes (32/64 bit platforms) per entry.  To conserve space, file and
+tree names are pooled in a common string table, allowing the filename
+``Makefile'' to use just 16 bytes (after including the string header
+overhead) no matter how many times it occurs within the project.
+
+The active branch LRU, when coupled with the filename string pool
+and lazy loading of subtrees, allows gfi to efficiently import
+projects with 2,000+ branches and 45,114+ files in a very limited
+memory footprint (less than 2.7 MiB per active branch).
+
+
+Author
+------
+Written by Shawn O. Pearce <spearce@spearce.org>.
+
+Documentation
+--------------
+Documentation by Shawn O. Pearce <spearce@spearce.org>.
+
+GIT
+---
+Part of the gitlink:git[7] suite
+