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

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, gitam will fail if the patch does not apply cleanly. When set to true, this setting
           tells gitam 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).

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.

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 gitam, 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 gitam--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 gitam 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).

Git

       Part of the git(1) suite

Git 2.48.1                                         07/02/2025                                          GIT-AM(1)

Hooks

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

Name

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

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 gitmailinfo (see git-mailinfo(1)).

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

       --[no-]keep-cr
           With --keep-cr, call gitmailsplit (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 gitmailinfo (see git-mailinfo(1)).

       --empty=(drop|keep|stop)
           How to handle an e-mail message lacking a patch:

           drop
               The e-mail message will be skipped.

           keep
               An empty commit will be created, with the contents of the e-mail message as its log.

           stop
               The command will fail, stopping in the middle of the current am session. This is the default
               behavior.

       -m, --message-id
           Pass the -m flag to gitmailinfo (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 gitmailinfo (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 gitmailinfo (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 gitadd.

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

           Valid <action> for the --whitespace option are: nowarn, warn, fix, error, and error-all.

       --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 gitrebase and gitam.

       --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.

       --retry
           Try to apply the last conflicting patch again. This is generally only useful for passing extra
           options to the retry attempt (e.g., --3way), since otherwise you’ll just see the same failure again.

       --show-current-patch[=(diff|raw)]
           Show the message at which gitam 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.

Synopsis

gitam [--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>)...]
       gitam (--continue | --skip | --abort | --quit | --retry | --show-current-patch[=(diff|raw)] | --allow-empty)