NAME

git-format-patch - Prepare patches for e-mail submission

SYNOPSIS

git format-patch [-k] [(-o|--output-directory) <dir> | --stdout]
           [--no-thread | --thread[=<style>]]
           [(--attach|--inline)[=<boundary>] | --no-attach]
           [-s | --signoff]
           [--signature=<signature> | --no-signature]
           [--signature-file=<file>]
           [-n | --numbered | -N | --no-numbered]
           [--start-number <n>] [--numbered-files]
           [--in-reply-to=Message-Id] [--suffix=.<sfx>]
           [--ignore-if-in-upstream]
           [--rfc] [--subject-prefix=Subject-Prefix]
           [(--reroll-count|-v) <n>]
           [--to=<email>] [--cc=<email>]
           [--[no-]cover-letter] [--quiet]
           [--no-notes | --notes[=<ref>]]
           [--interdiff=<previous>]
           [--range-diff=<previous> [--creation-factor=<percent>]]
           [--progress]
           [<common diff options>]
           [ <since> | <revision range> ]

DESCRIPTION

Prepare each commit with its patch inone file per commit, formatted to resemble UNIX mailbox format.The output of this command is convenient for e-mail submission orfor use with git am.

There are two ways to specify which commits to operate on.

• A single commit, , specifies that the commits leadingto the tip of the current branch that are not in the historythat leads to the to be output.

• Generic expression (see "SPECIFYINGREVISIONS" section in gitrevisions[7]) means thecommits in the specified range.

The first rule takes precedence in the case of a single <commit>. Toapply the second rule, i.e., format everything since the beginning ofhistory up until <commit>, use the —root option: git format-patch—root <commit>. If you want to format only <commit> itself, youcan do this with git format-patch -1 <commit>.

By default, each output file is numbered sequentially from 1, and uses thefirst line of the commit message (massaged for pathname safety) asthe filename. With the —numbered-files option, the output file nameswill only be numbers, without the first line of the commit appended.The names of the output files are printed to standardoutput, unless the —stdout option is specified.

If -o is specified, output files are created in <dir>. Otherwisethey are created in the current working directory. The default pathcan be set with the format.outputDirectory configuration option.The -o option takes precedence over format.outputDirectory.To store patches in the current working directory even whenformat.outputDirectory points elsewhere, use -o ..

By default, the subject of a single patch is "[PATCH] " followed bythe concatenation of lines from the commit message up to the first blankline (see the DISCUSSION section of git-commit[1]).

When multiple patches are output, the subject prefix will instead be"[PATCH n/m] ". To force 1/1 to be added for a single patch, use -n.To omit patch numbers from the subject, use -N.

If given —thread, git-format-patch will generate In-Reply-To andReferences headers to make the second and subsequent patch mails appearas replies to the first mail; this also generates a Message-Id header toreference.

OPTIONS

• -p
• —no-stat

• Generate plain patches without any diffstats.

• -U

• —unified=

• Generate diffs with lines of context instead ofthe usual three. Implies —patch.

• —output=

• Output to a specific file instead of stdout.

• —output-indicator-new=

• —output-indicator-old=
• —output-indicator-context=

• Specify the character used to indicate new, old or contextlines in the generated patch. Normally they are +, - and' ' respectively.

• —indent-heuristic

• Enable the heuristic that shifts diff hunk boundaries to make patcheseasier to read. This is the default.

• —no-indent-heuristic

• Disable the indent heuristic.

• —minimal

• Spend extra time to make sure the smallest possiblediff is produced.

• —patience

• Generate a diff using the "patience diff" algorithm.

• —histogram

• Generate a diff using the "histogram diff" algorithm.

• —anchored=

• Generate a diff using the "anchored diff" algorithm.

This option may be specified more than once.

If a line exists in both the source and destination, exists only once,and starts with this text, this algorithm attempts to prevent it fromappearing as a deletion or addition in the output. It uses the "patiencediff" algorithm internally.

• —diff-algorithm={patience|minimal|histogram|myers}
• Choose a diff algorithm. The variants are as follows:

• default, myers

• The basic greedy diff algorithm. Currently, this is the default.

• minimal

• Spend extra time to make sure the smallest possible diff isproduced.

• patience

• Use "patience diff" algorithm when generating patches.

• histogram

• This algorithm extends the patience algorithm to "supportlow-occurrence common elements".

For instance, if you configured the diff.algorithm variable to anon-default value and want to use the default one, then youhave to use —diff-algorithm=default option.

• —stat[=[,[,]]]
• Generate a diffstat. By default, as much space as necessarywill be used for the filename part, and the rest for the graphpart. Maximum width defaults to terminal width, or 80 columnsif not connected to a terminal, and can be overridden by<width>. The width of the filename part can be limited bygiving another width <name-width> after a comma. The widthof the graph part can be limited by using—stat-graph-width=<width> (affects all commands generatinga stat graph) or by setting diff.statGraphWidth=<width>(does not affect git format-patch).By giving a third parameter <count>, you can limit theoutput to the first <count> lines, followed by … ifthere are more.

These parameters can also be set individually with —stat-width=<width>,—stat-name-width=<name-width> and —stat-count=<count>.

• —compact-summary

• Output a condensed summary of extended header information suchas file creations or deletions ("new" or "gone", optionally "+l"if it’s a symlink) and mode changes ("+x" or "-x" for addingor removing executable bit respectively) in diffstat. Theinformation is put between the filename part and the graphpart. Implies —stat.

• —numstat

• Similar to —stat, but shows number of added anddeleted lines in decimal notation and pathname withoutabbreviation, to make it more machine friendly. Forbinary files, outputs two - instead of saying0 0.

• —shortstat

• Output only the last line of the —stat format containing totalnumber of modified files, as well as number of added and deletedlines.

• -X[]

• —dirstat[=]
• Output the distribution of relative amount of changes for eachsub-directory. The behavior of —dirstat can be customized bypassing it a comma separated list of parameters.The defaults are controlled by the diff.dirstat configurationvariable (see git-config[1]).The following parameters are available:

• changes

• Compute the dirstat numbers by counting the lines that have beenremoved from the source, or added to the destination. This ignoresthe amount of pure code movements within a file. In other words,rearranging lines in a file is not counted as much as other changes.This is the default behavior when no parameter is given.

• lines

• Compute the dirstat numbers by doing the regular line-based diffanalysis, and summing the removed/added line counts. (For binaryfiles, count 64-byte chunks instead, since binary files have nonatural concept of lines). This is a more expensive —dirstatbehavior than the changes behavior, but it does count rearrangedlines within a file as much as other changes. The resulting outputis consistent with what you get from the other —*stat options.

• files

• Compute the dirstat numbers by counting the number of files changed.Each changed file counts equally in the dirstat analysis. This isthe computationally cheapest —dirstat behavior, since it doesnot have to look at the file contents at all.

• cumulative

• Count changes in a child directory for the parent directory as well.Note that when using cumulative, the sum of the percentagesreported may exceed 100%. The default (non-cumulative) behavior canbe specified with the noncumulative parameter.

• An integer parameter specifies a cut-off percent (3% by default).Directories contributing less than this percentage of the changesare not shown in the output.

Example: The following will count changed files, while ignoringdirectories with less than 10% of the total amount of changed files,and accumulating child directory counts in the parent directories:—dirstat=files,10,cumulative.

• —cumulative

• Synonym for —dirstat=cumulative

• —dirstat-by-file[=…​]

• Synonym for —dirstat=files,param1,param2…​

• —summary

• Output a condensed summary of extended header informationsuch as creations, renames and mode changes.

• —no-renames

• Turn off rename detection, even when the configurationfile gives the default to do so.

• —[no-]rename-empty

• Whether to use empty blobs as rename source.

• —full-index

• Instead of the first handful of characters, show the fullpre- and post-image blob object names on the "index"line when generating patch format output.

• —binary

• In addition to —full-index, output a binary diff thatcan be applied with git-apply. Implies —patch.

• —abbrev[=]

• Instead of showing the full 40-byte hexadecimal objectname in diff-raw format output and diff-tree headerlines, show only a partial prefix. This isindependent of the —full-index option above, which controlsthe diff-patch output format. Non default number ofdigits can be specified with —abbrev=<n>.

• -B[][/]

• —break-rewrites[=[][/]]
• Break complete rewrite changes into pairs of delete andcreate. This serves two purposes:

It affects the way a change that amounts to a total rewrite of a filenot as a series of deletion and insertion mixed together with a veryfew lines that happen to match textually as the context, but as asingle deletion of everything old followed by a single insertion ofeverything new, and the number m controls this aspect of the -Boption (defaults to 60%). -B/70% specifies that less than 30% of theoriginal should remain in the result for Git to consider it a totalrewrite (i.e. otherwise the resulting patch will be a series ofdeletion and insertion mixed together with context lines).

When used with -M, a totally-rewritten file is also considered as thesource of a rename (usually -M only considers a file that disappearedas the source of a rename), and the number n controls this aspect ofthe -B option (defaults to 50%). -B20% specifies that a change withaddition and deletion compared to 20% or more of the file’s size areeligible for being picked up as a possible source of a rename toanother file.

• -M[]
• —find-renames[=]

• Detect renames.If n is specified, it is a threshold on the similarityindex (i.e. amount of addition/deletions compared to thefile’s size). For example, -M90% means Git should consider adelete/add pair to be a rename if more than 90% of the filehasn’t changed. Without a % sign, the number is to be read asa fraction, with a decimal point before it. I.e., -M5 becomes0.5, and is thus the same as -M50%. Similarly, -M05 isthe same as -M5%. To limit detection to exact renames, use-M100%. The default similarity index is 50%.

• -C[]

• —find-copies[=]

• Detect copies as well as renames. See also —find-copies-harder.If n is specified, it has the same meaning as for -M<n>.

• —find-copies-harder

• For performance reasons, by default, -C option finds copies onlyif the original file of the copy was modified in the samechangeset. This flag makes the commandinspect unmodified files as candidates for the source ofcopy. This is a very expensive operation for largeprojects, so use it with caution. Giving more than one-C option has the same effect.

• -D

• —irreversible-delete
• Omit the preimage for deletes, i.e. print only the header but notthe diff between the preimage and /dev/null. The resulting patchis not meant to be applied with patch or git apply; this issolely for people who want to just concentrate on reviewing thetext after the change. In addition, the output obviously lacksenough information to apply such a patch in reverse, even manually,hence the name of the option.

When used together with -B, omit also the preimage in the deletion partof a delete/create pair.

• -l

• The -M and -C options require O(n^2) processing time where nis the number of potential rename/copy targets. Thisoption prevents rename/copy detection from running ifthe number of rename/copy targets exceeds the specifiednumber.

• -O

• Control the order in which files appear in the output.This overrides the diff.orderFile configuration variable(see git-config[1]). To cancel diff.orderFile,use -O/dev/null.

The output order is determined by the order of glob patterns in.All files with pathnames that match the first pattern are outputfirst, all files with pathnames that match the second pattern (but notthe first) are output next, and so on.All files with pathnames that do not match any pattern are outputlast, as if there was an implicit match-all pattern at the end of thefile.If multiple pathnames have the same rank (they match the same patternbut no earlier patterns), their output order relative to each other isthe normal order.

is parsed as follows:

• Blank lines are ignored, so they can be used as separators forreadability.

• Lines starting with a hash ("#") are ignored, so they can be usedfor comments. Add a backslash ("\") to the beginning of thepattern if it starts with a hash.

• Each other line contains a single pattern.

Patterns have the same syntax and semantics as patterns used forfnmatch(3) without the FNM_PATHNAME flag, except a pathname alsomatches a pattern if removing any number of the final pathnamecomponents matches the pattern. For example, the pattern "foo*bar"matches "fooasdfbar" and "foo/bar/baz/asdf" but not "foobarx".

• -a
• —text

• Treat all files as text.

• —ignore-cr-at-eol

• Ignore carriage-return at the end of line when doing a comparison.

• —ignore-space-at-eol

• Ignore changes in whitespace at EOL.

• -b

• —ignore-space-change

• Ignore changes in amount of whitespace. This ignores whitespaceat line end, and considers all other sequences of one ormore whitespace characters to be equivalent.

• -w

• —ignore-all-space

• Ignore whitespace when comparing lines. This ignoresdifferences even if one line has whitespace where the otherline has none.

• —ignore-blank-lines

• Ignore changes whose lines are all blank.

• —inter-hunk-context=

• Show the context between diff hunks, up to the specified numberof lines, thereby fusing hunks that are close to each other.Defaults to diff.interHunkContext or 0 if the config optionis unset.

• -W

• —function-context

• Show whole surrounding functions of changes.

• —ext-diff

• Allow an external diff helper to be executed. If you set anexternal diff driver with gitattributes[5], you needto use this option with git-log[1] and friends.

• —no-ext-diff

• Disallow external diff drivers.

• —textconv

• —no-textconv

• Allow (or disallow) external text conversion filters to be runwhen comparing binary files. See gitattributes[5] fordetails. Because textconv filters are typically a one-wayconversion, the resulting diff is suitable for humanconsumption, but cannot be applied. For this reason, textconvfilters are enabled by default only for git-diff[1] andgit-log[1], but not for git-format-patch[1] ordiff plumbing commands.

• —ignore-submodules[=]

• Ignore changes to submodules in the diff generation. can beeither "none", "untracked", "dirty" or "all", which is the default.Using "none" will consider the submodule modified when it either containsuntracked or modified files or its HEAD differs from the commit recordedin the superproject and can be used to override any settings of theignore option in git-config[1] or gitmodules[5]. When"untracked" is used submodules are not considered dirty when they onlycontain untracked content (but they are still scanned for modifiedcontent). Using "dirty" ignores all changes to the work tree of submodules,only changes to the commits stored in the superproject are shown (this wasthe behavior until 1.7.0). Using "all" hides all changes to submodules.

• —src-prefix=

• Show the given source prefix instead of "a/".

• —dst-prefix=

• Show the given destination prefix instead of "b/".

• —no-prefix

• Do not show any source or destination prefix.

• —line-prefix=

• Prepend an additional prefix to every line of output.

• —ita-invisible-in-index

• By default entries added by "git add -N" appear as an existingempty file in "git diff" and a new file in "git diff —cached".This option makes the entry appear as a new file in "git diff"and non-existent in "git diff —cached". This option could bereverted with —ita-visible-in-index. Both options areexperimental and could be removed in future.

For more detailed explanation on these common options, see alsogitdiffcore[7].

• -

• Prepare patches from the topmost commits.

• -o

• —output-directory

• Use

  to store the resulting files, instead of thecurrent working directory.

• -n

• —numbered

• Name output in [PATCH n/m] format, even with a single patch.

• -N

• —no-numbered

• Name output in [PATCH] format.

• —start-number

• Start numbering the patches at instead of 1.

• —numbered-files

• Output file names will be a simple number sequencewithout the default first line of the commit appended.

• -k

• —keep-subject

• Do not strip/add [PATCH] from the first line of thecommit log message.

• -s

• —signoff

• Add Signed-off-by: line to the commit message, usingthe committer identity of yourself.See the signoff option in git-commit[1] for more information.

• —stdout

• Print all commits to the standard output in mbox format,instead of creating a file for each one.

• —attach[=]

• Create multipart/mixed attachment, the first part ofwhich is the commit message and the patch itself in thesecond part, with Content-Disposition: attachment.

• —no-attach

• Disable the creation of an attachment, overriding theconfiguration setting.

• —inline[=]

• Create multipart/mixed attachment, the first part ofwhich is the commit message and the patch itself in thesecond part, with Content-Disposition: inline.

• —thread[=

CONFIGURATION

You can specify extra mail header lines to be added to each message,defaults for the subject prefix and file suffix, number patches whenoutputting more than one patch, add "To" or "Cc:" headers, configureattachments, and sign off patches with configuration variables.

[format]
    headers = "Organization: git-foo\n"
    subjectPrefix = CHANGE
    suffix = .txt
    numbered = auto
    to = <email>
    cc = <email>
    attach [ = mime-boundary-string ]
    signOff = true
    coverletter = auto

DISCUSSION

The patch produced by git format-patch is in UNIX mailbox format,with a fixed "magic" time stamp to indicate that the file is outputfrom format-patch rather than a real mailbox, like so:

From 8f72bad1baf19a53459661343e21d6491c3908d3 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Tony Luck <tony.luck@intel.com>
Date: Tue, 13 Jul 2010 11:42:54 -0700
Subject: [PATCH] =?UTF-8?q?[IA64]=20Put=20ia64=20config=20files=20on=20the=20?=
 =?UTF-8?q?Uwe=20Kleine-K=C3=B6nig=20diet?=
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
 
arch/arm config files were slimmed down using a python script
(See commit c2330e286f68f1c408b4aa6515ba49d57f05beae comment)
 
Do the same for ia64 so we can have sleek & trim looking
...

Typically it will be placed in a MUA’s drafts folder, edited to addtimely commentary that should not go in the changelog after the threedashes, and then sent as a message whose body, in our example, startswith "arch/arm config files were…​". On the receiving end, readerscan save interesting patches in a UNIX mailbox and apply them withgit-am[1].

When a patch is part of an ongoing discussion, the patch generated bygit format-patch can be tweaked to take advantage of the git am—scissors feature. After your response to the discussion comes aline that consists solely of "— >8 —" (scissors and perforation),followed by the patch with unnecessary header fields removed:

...
> So we should do such-and-such.
 
Makes sense to me.  How about this patch?
 
-- >8 --
Subject: [IA64] Put ia64 config files on the Uwe Kleine-König diet
 
arch/arm config files were slimmed down using a python script
...

When sending a patch this way, most often you are sending your ownpatch, so in addition to the "From $SHA1 $magic_timestamp" marker youshould omit From: and Date: lines from the patch file. The patchtitle is likely to be different from the subject of the discussion thepatch is in response to, so it is likely that you would want to keepthe Subject: line, like the example above.

Checking for patch corruption

Many mailers if not set up properly will corrupt whitespace. Here aretwo common types of corruption:

• Empty context lines that do not have any whitespace.

• Non-empty context lines that have one extra whitespace at thebeginning.

One way to test if your MUA is set up correctly is:

• Send the patch to yourself, exactly the way you would, exceptwith To: and Cc: lines that do not contain the list andmaintainer address.

• Save that patch to a file in UNIX mailbox format. Call it a.patch,say.

• Apply it:

$ git fetch <project> master:test-apply
$ git switch test-apply
$ git restore --source=HEAD --staged --worktree :/
$ git am a.patch

If it does not apply correctly, there can be various reasons.

• The patch itself does not apply cleanly. That is bad butdoes not have much to do with your MUA. You might want to rebasethe patch with git-rebase[1] before regenerating it inthis case.

• The MUA corrupted your patch; "am" would complain thatthe patch does not apply. Look in the .git/rebase-apply/ subdirectory andsee what patch file contains and check for the commoncorruption patterns mentioned above.

• While at it, check the info and final-commit files as well.If what is in final-commit is not exactly what you would want tosee in the commit log message, it is very likely that thereceiver would end up hand editing the log message when applyingyour patch. Things like "Hi, this is my first patch.\n" in thepatch e-mail should come after the three-dash line that signalsthe end of the commit message.

MUA-SPECIFIC HINTS

Here are some hints on how to successfully submit patches inline usingvarious mailers.

GMail

GMail does not have any way to turn off line wrapping in the webinterface, so it will mangle any emails that you send. You can howeveruse "git send-email" and send your patches through the GMail SMTP server, oruse any IMAP email client to connect to the google IMAP server and forwardthe emails through that.

For hints on using git send-email to send your patches through theGMail SMTP server, see the EXAMPLE section of git-send-email[1].

For hints on submission using the IMAP interface, see the EXAMPLEsection of git-imap-send[1].

Thunderbird

By default, Thunderbird will both wrap emails as well as flagthem as being format=flowed, both of which will make theresulting email unusable by Git.

There are three different approaches: use an add-on to turn off line wraps,configure Thunderbird to not mangle patches, or usean external editor to keep Thunderbird from mangling the patches.

Approach #1 (add-on)

Install the Toggle Word Wrap add-on that is available fromhttps://addons.mozilla.org/thunderbird/addon/toggle-word-wrap/It adds a menu entry "Enable Word Wrap" in the composer’s "Options" menuthat you can tick off. Now you can compose the message as you otherwise do(cut + paste, git format-patch | git imap-send, etc), but you have toinsert line breaks manually in any text that you type.

Approach #2 (configuration)

Three steps:

• Configure your mail server composition as plain text:Edit…​Account Settings…​Composition & Addressing,uncheck "Compose Messages in HTML".

• Configure your general composition window to not wrap.

In Thunderbird 2:Edit..Preferences..Composition, wrap plain text messages at 0

In Thunderbird 3:Edit..Preferences..Advanced..Config Editor. Search for"mail.wrap_long_lines".Toggle it to make sure it is set to false. Also, search for"mailnews.wraplength" and set the value to 0.

• Disable the use of format=flowed:Edit..Preferences..Advanced..Config Editor. Search for"mailnews.send_plaintext_flowed".Toggle it to make sure it is set to false.

After that is done, you should be able to compose email as youotherwise would (cut + paste, git format-patch | git imap-send, etc),and the patches will not be mangled.

Approach #3 (external editor)

The following Thunderbird extensions are needed:AboutConfig from http://aboutconfig.mozdev.org/ andExternal Editor from http://globs.org/articles.php?lng=en&pg=8

• Prepare the patch as a text file using your method of choice.

• Before opening a compose window, use Edit→Account Settings touncheck the "Compose messages in HTML format" setting in the"Composition & Addressing" panel of the account to be used tosend the patch.

• In the main Thunderbird window, before you open the composewindow for the patch, use Tools→about:config to set thefollowing to the indicated values:

    mailnews.send_plaintext_flowed  => false
    mailnews.wraplength             => 0

• Open a compose window and click the external editor icon.

• In the external editor window, read in the patch file and exitthe editor normally.

Side note: it may be possible to do step 2 withabout:config and the following settings but no one’s tried yet.

    mail.html_compose                       => false
    mail.identity.default.compose_html      => false
    mail.identity.id?.compose_html          => false

There is a script in contrib/thunderbird-patch-inline which can helpyou include patches with Thunderbird in an easy way. To use it, do thesteps above and then use the script as the external editor.

KMail

This should help you to submit patches inline using KMail.

• Prepare the patch as a text file.

• Click on New Mail.

• Go under "Options" in the Composer window and be sure that"Word wrap" is not set.

• Use Message → Insert file…​ and insert the patch.

• Back in the compose window: add whatever other text you wish to themessage, complete the addressing and subject fields, and press send.

BASE TREE INFORMATION

The base tree information block is used for maintainers or third partytesters to know the exact state the patch series applies to. It consistsof the base commit, which is a well-known commit that is part of thestable part of the project history everybody else works off of, and zeroor more prerequisite patches, which are well-known patches in flightthat is not yet part of the base commit that need to be applied on topof base commit in topological order before the patches can be applied.

The base commit is shown as "base-commit: " followed by the 40-hex ofthe commit object name. A prerequisite patch is shown as"prerequisite-patch-id: " followed by the 40-hex patch id, which canbe obtained by passing the patch through the git patch-id —stablecommand.

Imagine that on top of the public commit P, you applied well-knownpatches X, Y and Z from somebody else, and then built your three-patchseries A, B, C, the history would be like:

---P---X---Y---Z---A---B---C

With git format-patch —base=P -3 C (or variants thereof, e.g. with—cover-letter or using Z..C instead of -3 C to specify therange), the base tree information block is shown at the end of thefirst message the command outputs (either the first patch, or thecover letter), like this:

base-commit: P
prerequisite-patch-id: X
prerequisite-patch-id: Y
prerequisite-patch-id: Z

For non-linear topology, such as

---P---X---A---M---C
    \         /
     Y---Z---B

You can also use git format-patch —base=P -3 C to generate patchesfor A, B and C, and the identifiers for P, X, Y, Z are appended at theend of the first message.

If set —base=auto in cmdline, it will track base commit automatically,the base commit will be the merge base of tip commit of the remote-trackingbranch and revision-range specified in cmdline.For a local branch, you need to track a remote branch by git branch—set-upstream-to before using this option.

EXAMPLES

• Extract commits between revisions R1 and R2, and apply them on top ofthe current branch using git am to cherry-pick them:

$ git format-patch -k --stdout R1..R2 | git am -3 -k

• Extract all commits which are in the current branch but not in theorigin branch:

$ git format-patch origin

For each commit a separate file is created in the current directory.

• Extract all commits that lead to origin since the inception of theproject:

$ git format-patch --root origin

• The same as the previous one:

$ git format-patch -M -B origin

Additionally, it detects and handles renames and complete rewritesintelligently to produce a renaming patch. A renaming patch reducesthe amount of text output, and generally makes it easier to review.Note that non-Git "patch" programs won’t understand renaming patches, souse it only when you know the recipient uses Git to apply your patch.

• Extract three topmost commits from the current branch and format themas e-mailable patches:

$ git format-patch -3

SEE ALSO

git-am[1], git-send-email[1]

GIT

Part of the git[1] suite