magit.org

Magit User Manual

Magit is an interface to the version control system Git, implemented as an Emacs package. Magit aspires to be a complete Git porcelain. While we cannot (yet) claim that Magit wraps and improves upon each and every Git command, it is complete enough to allow even experienced Git users to perform almost all of their daily version control tasks directly from within Emacs. While many fine Git clients exist, only Magit and Git itself deserve to be called porcelains.

This manual is for Magit version 2.13.0 (2.13.0-166-g1a7f5440+1).

Copyright (C) 2015-2018 Jonas Bernoulli <jonas@bernoul.li>

You can redistribute this document and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This document is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

Introduction

Magit is an interface to the version control system Git, implemented as an Emacs package. Magit aspires to be a complete Git porcelain. While we cannot (yet) claim that Magit wraps and improves upon each and every Git command, it is complete enough to allow even experienced Git users to perform almost all of their daily version control tasks directly from within Emacs. While many fine Git clients exist, only Magit and Git itself deserve to be called porcelains.

Staging and otherwise applying changes is one of the most important features in a Git porcelain and here Magit outshines anything else, including Git itself. Git’s own staging interface (git add --patch) is so cumbersome that many users only use it in exceptional cases. In Magit staging a hunk or even just part of a hunk is as trivial as staging all changes made to a file.

The most visible part of Magit’s interface is the status buffer, which displays information about the current repository. Its content is created by running several Git commands and making their output actionable. Among other things, it displays information about the current branch, lists unpulled and unpushed changes and contains sections displaying the staged and unstaged changes. That might sound noisy, but, since sections are collapsible, it’s not.

To stage or unstage a change one places the cursor on the change and then types s or u. The change can be a file or a hunk, or when the region is active (i.e. when there is a selection) several files or hunks, or even just part of a hunk. The change or changes that these commands - and many others - would act on are highlighted.

Magit also implements several other “apply variants” in addition to staging and unstaging. One can discard or reverse a change, or apply it to the working tree. Git’s own porcelain only supports this for staging and unstaging and you would have to do something like git diff ... | ??? | git apply ... to discard, revert, or apply a single hunk on the command line. In fact that’s exactly what Magit does internally (which is what lead to the term “apply variants”).

Magit isn’t just for Git experts, but it does assume some prior experience with Git as well as Emacs. That being said, many users have reported that using Magit was what finally taught them what Git is capable of and how to use it to its fullest. Other users wished they had switched to Emacs sooner so that they would have gotten their hands on Magit earlier.

While one has to know the basic features of Emacs to be able to make full use of Magit, acquiring just enough Emacs skills doesn’t take long and is worth it, even for users who prefer other editors. Vim users are advised to give Evil, the “Extensible VI Layer for Emacs”, and Spacemacs, an “Emacs starter-kit focused on Evil” a try.

Magit provides a consistent and efficient Git porcelain. After a short learning period, you will be able to perform most of your daily version control tasks faster than you would on the command line. You will likely also start using features that seemed too daunting in the past.

Magit fully embraces Git. It exposes many advanced features using a simple but flexible interface instead of only wrapping the trivial ones like many GUI clients do. Of course Magit supports logging, cloning, pushing, and other commands that usually don’t fail in spectacular ways; but it also supports tasks that often cannot be completed in a single step. Magit fully supports tasks such as merging, rebasing, cherry-picking, reverting, and blaming by not only providing a command to initiate these tasks but also by displaying context sensitive information along the way and providing commands that are useful for resolving conflicts and resuming the sequence after doing so.

Magit wraps and in many cases improves upon at least the following Git porcelain commands: add, am, bisect, blame, branch, checkout, cherry, cherry-pick, clean, clone, commit, config, describe, diff, fetch, format-patch, init, log, merge, merge-tree, mv, notes, pull, rebase, reflog, remote, request-pull, reset, revert, rm, show, stash, submodule, subtree, tag, and worktree. Many more Magit porcelain commands are implemented on top of Git plumbing commands.

Installation

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Magit can be installed using Emacs’ package manager or manually from its development repository.

Installing from an Elpa Archive

Magit is available from Melpa and Melpa-Stable. If you haven’t used Emacs’ package manager before, then it is high time you familiarize yourself with it by reading the documentation in the Emacs manual, see info:emacs#Packages. Then add one of the archives to package-archives:

• To use Melpa:

(require 'package)
(add-to-list 'package-archives
             '("melpa" . "http://melpa.org/packages/") t)

• To use Melpa-Stable:

(require 'package)
(add-to-list 'package-archives
             '("melpa-stable" . "http://stable.melpa.org/packages/") t)

Once you have added your preferred archive, you need to update the local package list using:

M-x package-refresh-contents RET

Once you have done that, you can install Magit and its dependencies using:

M-x package-install RET magit RET

Now see *Post-Installation Tasks.

Installing from the Git Repository

Magit depends on the dash, magit-popup, ghub and with-editor libraries which are available from Melpa and Melpa-Stable. Install them using M-x package-install RET <package> RET. Of course you may also install them manually from their development repository.

(An ancient release of Magit is also available from Marmalade, but no new versions will be uploaded. Marmalade is unmaintained — its maintainer has stopped responding to support requests from package authors or even just to create new accounts so that new authors can upload their packages in the first place.)

Then clone the Magit repository:

$ git clone https://github.com/magit/magit.git ~/.emacs.d/site-lisp/magit
$ cd ~/.emacs.d/site-lisp/magit

Then compile the libraries and generate the info manuals:

$ make

If you haven’t installed dash, magit-popup, ghub and with-editor from Melpa or at /path/to/magit/../<package>, then you have to tell make where to find them. To do so create the file /path/to/magit/config.mk with the following content before running make:

LOAD_PATH  = -L /path/to/magit/lisp
LOAD_PATH += -L /path/to/dash
LOAD_PATH += -L /path/to/magit-popup
LOAD_PATH += -L /path/to/ghub
LOAD_PATH += -L /path/to/with-editor

Finally add this to your init file:

(add-to-list 'load-path "~/.emacs.d/site-lisp/magit/lisp")
(require 'magit)

(with-eval-after-load 'info
  (info-initialize)
  (add-to-list 'Info-directory-list
               "~/.emacs.d/site-lisp/magit/Documentation/"))

Note that you have to add the lisp subdirectory to the load-path, not the top-level of the repository, and that elements of load-path should not end with a slash, while those of Info-directory-list should.

Instead of requiring the feature magit, you could load just the autoload definitions, by loading the file magit-autoloads.el.

(load "/path/to/magit/lisp/magit-autoloads")

Instead of running Magit directly from the repository by adding that to the load-path, you might want to instead install it in some other directory using sudo make install and setting load-path accordingly.

To update Magit use:

$ git pull
$ make

At times it might be necessary to run make clean all instead.

To view all available targets use make help.

Now see *Post-Installation Tasks.

Post-Installation Tasks

After installing Magit you should verify that you are indeed using the Magit, Git, and Emacs releases you think you are using. It’s best to restart Emacs before doing so, to make sure you are not using an outdated value for load-path.

M-x magit-version RET

should display something like

Magit 2.8.0, Git 2.10.2, Emacs 25.1.1, gnu/linux

Then you might also want to read about options that many users likely want to customize. See *Essential Settings.

To be able to follow cross references to Git manpages found in this manual, you might also have to manually install the gitman info manual, or advice Info-follow-nearest-node to instead open the actual manpage. See *How to install the gitman info manual?.

If you are completely new to Magit then see *Getting Started.

If you run into problems, then please see the *FAQ. Also see the *Debugging Tools.

And last but not least please consider making a donation, to ensure that I can keep working on Magit. See https://magit.vc/donations. for various donation options.

Getting Started

This short tutorial describes the most essential features that many Magitians use on a daily basis. It only scratches the surface but should be enough to get you started.

IMPORTANT: It is safest if you clone some repository just for this tutorial. Alternatively you can use an existing local repository, but if you do that, then you should commit all uncommitted changes before proceeding.

To display information about the current Git repository, type M-x magit-status RET. You will be using this command a lot, and should therefore give it a global key binding. This is what we recommend:

(global-set-key (kbd "C-x g") 'magit-status)

Most Magit commands are commonly invoked from the status buffer. It can be considered the primary interface for interacting with Git using Magit. Many other Magit buffers may exist at a given time, but they are often created from this buffer.

Depending on what state your repository is in, this buffer may contain sections titled “Staged changes”, “Unstaged changes”, “Unmerged into origin/master”, “Unpushed to origin/master”, and many others.

Since we are starting from a safe state, which you can easily return to (by doing a git reset --hard PRE-MAGIT-STATE), there currently are not staged or unstaged changes. Edit some files and save the changes. Then go back to the status buffer, while at the same time refreshing it, by typing C-x g. (When the status buffer, or any Magit buffer for that matter, is the current buffer, then you can also use just g to refresh it).

Move between sections using p and n. Note that the bodies of some sections are hidden. Type TAB to expand or collapse the section at point. You can also use C-tab to cycle the visibility of the current section and its children. Move to a file section inside the section named “Unstaged changes” and type s to stage the changes you have made to that file. That file now appears under “Staged changes”.

Magit can stage and unstage individual hunks, not just complete files. Move to the file you have just staged, expand it using TAB, move to one of the hunks using n, and unstage just that by typing u. Note how the staging (s) and unstaging (u) commands operate on the change at point. Many other commands behave the same way.

You can also un-/stage just part of a hunk. Inside the body of a hunk section (move there using C-n), set the mark using C-SPC and move down until some added and/or removed lines fall inside the region but not all of them. Again type s to stage.

It is also possible to un-/stage multiple files at once. Move to a file section, type C-SPC, move to the next file using n, and then s to stage both files. Note that both the mark and point have to be on the headings of sibling sections for this to work. If the region looks like it does in other buffers, then it doesn’t select Magit sections that can be acted on as a unit.

And then of course you want to commit your changes. Type c. This shows the committing popup buffer featuring various commit variants and arguments that can be passed to git commit. Do not worry about those for now. We want to create a “normal” commit, which is done by typing c again.

Now two new buffers appear. One is for writing the commit message, the other shows a diff with the changes that you are about to committed. Write a message and then type C-c C-c to actually create the commit.

You probably don’t want to push the commit you just created because you just committed some random changes, but if that is not the case you could push it by typing P to bring up the push popup and then p to push to a branch with the same name as the local branch onto the remote configured as the push-remote. (If the push-remote is not configured yet, then you would first be prompted for the remote to push to.)

So far we have mentioned the commit, push, and log popups. These are probably among the popups you will be using the most, but many others exist. To show a popup that lists all other popups (as well as the various apply commands and some other fundamental commands), type h. Try a few.

The key bindings in that popup correspond to the bindings in Magit buffers, including but not limited to the status buffer. So you could type h d to bring up the diff popup, but once you remember that “d” stands for “diff”, you would usually do so by just typing d. But the “popup of popups” is useful even once you have memorized all the bindings, as it can provide easy access to Magit commands from non-Magit buffers. You should create a global key binding for this command too:

(global-set-key (kbd "C-x M-g") 'magit-dispatch-popup)

In the same vein, you might also want to enable global-magit-file-mode to get some more Magit key bindings in regular file-visiting buffers (see *Minor Mode for Buffers Visiting Files).

It is not necessary that you do so now, but if you stick with Magit, then it is highly recommended that you read the next section too.

Interface Concepts

Modes and Buffers

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Magit provides several major-modes. For each of these modes there usually exists only one buffer per repository. Separate modes and thus buffers exist for commits, diffs, logs, and some other things.

Besides these special purpose buffers, there also exists an overview buffer, called the status buffer. Its usually from this buffer that the user invokes Git commands, or creates or visits other buffers.

In this manual we often speak about “Magit buffers”. By that we mean buffers whose major-modes derive from magit-mode.

• Key: M-x magit-toggle-buffer-lock, magit-toggle-buffer-lock

  This command locks the current buffer to its value or if the buffer is already locked, then it unlocks it.

  Locking a buffer to its value prevents it from being reused to display another value. The name of a locked buffer contains its value, which allows telling it apart from other locked buffers and the unlocked buffer.

  Not all Magit buffers can be locked to their values, for example it wouldn’t make sense to lock a status buffer.

  There can only be a single unlocked buffer using a certain major-mode per repository. So when a buffer is being unlocked and another unlocked buffer already exists for that mode and repository, then the former buffer is instead deleted and the latter is displayed in its place.

Switching Buffers

• Function: magit-display-buffer buffer

  This function is a wrapper around display-buffer and is used to display any Magit buffer. It displays BUFFER in some window and, unlike display-buffer, also selects that window, provided magit-display-buffer-noselect is nil. It also runs the hooks mentioned below.

• Variable: magit-display-buffer-noselect

  When this is non-nil, then magit-display-buffer only displays the buffer but forgoes also selecting the window. This variable should not be set globally, it is only intended to be let-bound, by code that automatically updates “the other window”. This is used for example when the revision buffer is updated when you move inside the log buffer.

• User Option: magit-display-buffer-function

  The function specified here is called by magit-display-buffer with one argument, a buffer, to actually display that buffer. This function should call display-buffer with that buffer as first and a list of display actions as second argument.

  Magit provides several functions, listed below, that are suitable values for this option. If you want to use different rules, then a good way of doing that is to start with a copy of one of these functions and then adjust it to your needs.

  Instead of using a wrapper around display-buffer, that function itself can be used here, in which case the display actions have to be specified by adding them to display-buffer-alist instead.

  To learn about display actions, see <a href=”info:elisp#Choosing a Window for Display”>info:elisp#Choosing a Window for Display.

• Function: magit-display-buffer-traditional buffer

  This function is the current default value of the option magit-display-buffer-function. Before that option and this function were added, the behavior was hard-coded in many places all over the code base but now all the rules are contained in this one function (except for the “noselect” special case mentioned above).

• Function: magit-display-buffer-same-window-except-diff-v1

  This function displays most buffers in the currently selected window. If a buffer’s mode derives from magit-diff-mode or magit-process-mode, it is displayed in another window.

• Function: magit-display-buffer-fullframe-status-v1

  This function fills the entire frame when displaying a status buffer. Otherwise, it behaves like magit-display-buffer-traditional.

• Function: magit-display-buffer-fullframe-status-topleft-v1

  This function fills the entire frame when displaying a status buffer. It behaves like magit-display-buffer-fullframe-status-v1 except that it displays buffers that derive from magit-diff-mode or magit-process-mode to the top or left of the current buffer rather than to the bottom or right. As a result, Magit buffers tend to pop up on the same side as they would if magit-display-buffer-traditional were in use.

• Function: magit-display-buffer-fullcolumn-most-v1

  This function displays most buffers so that they fill the entire height of the frame. However, the buffer is displayed in another window if (1) the buffer’s mode derives from magit-process-mode, or (2) the buffer’s mode derives from magit-diff-mode, provided that the mode of the current buffer derives from magit-log-mode or magit-cherry-mode.

• User Option: magit-pre-display-buffer-hook

  This hook is run by magit-display-buffer before displaying the buffer.

• Function: magit-save-window-configuration

  This function saves the current window configuration. Later when the buffer is buried, it may be restored by magit-restore-window-configuration.

• User Option: magit-post-display-buffer-hook

  This hook is run by magit-display-buffer after displaying the buffer.

• Function: magit-maybe-set-dedicated

  This function remembers if a new window had to be created to display the buffer, or whether an existing window was reused. This information is later used by magit-mode-quit-window, to determine whether the window should be deleted when its last Magit buffer is buried.

Naming Buffers

• User Option: magit-generate-buffer-name-function

  The function used to generate the names of Magit buffers.

  Such a function should take the options magit-uniquify-buffer-names as well as magit-buffer-name-format into account. If it doesn’t, then should be clearly stated in the doc-string. And if it supports %-sequences beyond those mentioned in the doc-string of the option magit-buffer-name-format, then its own doc-string should describe the additions.

• Function: magit-generate-buffer-name-default-function mode

  This function returns a buffer name suitable for a buffer whose major-mode is MODE and which shows information about the repository in which default-directory is located.

  This function uses magit-buffer-name-format and supporting all of the %-sequences mentioned the documentation of that option. It also respects the option magit-uniquify-buffer-names.

• User Option: magit-buffer-name-format

  The format string used to name Magit buffers.

  At least the following %-sequences are supported:

  • %m

    The name of the major-mode, but with the -mode suffix removed.

  • %M

    Like %m but abbreviate magit-status-mode as magit.

  • %v

    The value the buffer is locked to, in parentheses, or an empty string if the buffer is not locked to a value.

  • %V

    Like %v, but the string is prefixed with a space, unless it is an empty string.

  • %t

    The top-level directory of the working tree of the repository, or if magit-uniquify-buffer-names is non-nil an abbreviation of that.

  • %x

    If magit-uniquify-buffer-names is nil “*”, otherwise the empty string. Due to limitations of the uniquify package, buffer names must end with the path.

  • %T

    Obsolete, use “%t%x” instead. Like %t, but append an asterisk if and only if magit-uniquify-buffer-names is nil.

  The value should always contain %m or %M, %v or %V, and %t (or the obsolete %T). If magit-uniquify-buffer-names is non-nil, then the value must end with %t or %t%x (or the obsolete %T). See issue #2841.

• User Option: magit-uniquify-buffer-names

  This option controls whether the names of Magit buffers are uniquified. If the names are not being uniquified, then they contain the full path of the top-level of the working tree of the corresponding repository. If they are being uniquified, then they end with the basename of the top-level, or if that would conflict with the name used for other buffers, then the names of all these buffers are adjusted until they no longer conflict.

  This is done using the uniquify package; customize its options to control how buffer names are uniquified.

Quitting Windows

• Key: q, magit-mode-bury-buffer

  This command buries the current Magit buffer. With a prefix argument, it instead kills the buffer.

• User Option: magit-bury-buffer-function

  The function used to actually bury or kill the current buffer.

  magit-mode-bury-buffer calls this function with one argument. If the argument is non-nil, then the function has to kill the current buffer. Otherwise it has to bury it alive. The default value currently is magit-restore-window-configuration.

• Function: magit-restore-window-configuration kill-buffer

  Bury or kill the current buffer using quit-window, which is called with KILL-BUFFER as first and the selected window as second argument.

  Then restore the window configuration that existed right before the current buffer was displayed in the selected frame. Unfortunately that also means that point gets adjusted in all the buffers, which are being displayed in the selected frame.

• Function: magit-mode-quit-window kill-buffer

  Bury or kill the current buffer using quit-window, which is called with KILL-BUFFER as first and the selected window as second argument.

  Then, if the window was originally created to display a Magit buffer and the buried buffer was the last remaining Magit buffer that was ever displayed in the window, then that is deleted.

Automatic Refreshing of Magit Buffers

After running a command which may change the state of the current repository, the current Magit buffer and the corresponding status buffer are refreshed. The status buffer may optionally be automatically refreshed whenever a buffer is saved to a file inside the respective repository.

Automatically refreshing Magit buffers ensures that the displayed information is up-to-date most of the time but can lead to a noticeable delay in big repositories. Other Magit buffers are not refreshed to keep the delay to a minimum and also because doing so can sometimes be undesirable.

Buffers can also be refreshed explicitly, which is useful in buffers that weren’t current during the last refresh and after changes were made to the repository outside of Magit.

• Key: g, magit-refresh

  This command refreshes the current buffer if its major mode derives from magit-mode as well as the corresponding status buffer.

  If the option magit-revert-buffers calls for it, then it also reverts all unmodified buffers that visit files being tracked in the current repository.

• Key: G, magit-refresh-all

  This command refreshes all Magit buffers belonging to the current repository and also reverts all unmodified buffers that visit files being tracked in the current repository.

  The file-visiting buffers are always reverted, even if magit-revert-buffers is nil.

• User Option: magit-refresh-buffer-hook

  This hook is run in each Magit buffer that was refreshed during the current refresh - normally the current buffer and the status buffer.

• User Option: magit-refresh-status-buffer

  When this option is non-nil, then the status buffer is automatically refreshed after running git for side-effects, in addition to the current Magit buffer, which is always refreshed automatically.

  Only set this to nil after exhausting all other options to improve performance.

• Function: magit-after-save-refresh-status

  This function is intended to be added to after-save-hook. After doing that the corresponding status buffer is refreshed whenever a buffer is saved to a file inside a repository.

  Note that refreshing a Magit buffer is done by re-creating its contents from scratch, which can be slow in large repositories. If you are not satisfied with Magit’s performance, then you should obviously not add this function to that hook.

Automatic Saving of File-Visiting Buffers

File-visiting buffers are by default saved at certain points in time. This doesn’t guarantee that Magit buffers are always up-to-date, but, provided one only edits files by editing them in Emacs and uses only Magit to interact with Git, one can be fairly confident. When in doubt or after outside changes, type g (magit-refresh) to save and refresh explicitly.

• User Option: magit-save-repository-buffers

  This option controls whether file-visiting buffers are saved before certain events.

  If this is non-nil then all modified file-visiting buffers belonging to the current repository may be saved before running commands, before creating new Magit buffers, and before explicitly refreshing such buffers. If this is dontask then this is done without user intervention. If it is t then the user has to confirm each save.

Automatic Reverting of File-Visiting Buffers

By default Magit automatically reverts buffers that are visiting files that are being tracked in a Git repository, after they have changed on disk. When using Magit one often changes files on disk by running git, i.e. “outside Emacs”, making this a rather important feature.

For example, if you discard a change in the status buffer, then that is done by running git apply --reverse ..., and Emacs considers the file to have “changed on disk”. If Magit did not automatically revert the buffer, then you would have to type M-x revert-buffer RET RET in the visiting buffer before you could continue making changes.

• User Option: magit-auto-revert-mode

  When this mode is enabled, then buffers that visit tracked files, are automatically reverted after the visited files changed on disk.

• User Option: global-auto-revert-mode

  When this mode is enabled, then any file-visiting buffer is automatically reverted after the visited file changed on disk.

  If you like buffers that visit tracked files to be automatically reverted, then you might also like any buffer to be reverted, not just those visiting tracked files. If that is the case, then enable this mode instead of magit-auto-revert-mode.

• User Option: magit-auto-revert-immediately

  This option controls whether Magit reverts buffers immediately.

  If this is non-nil and either global-auto-revert-mode or magit-auto-revert-mode is enabled, then Magit immediately reverts buffers by explicitly calling auto-revert-buffers after running git for side-effects.

  If auto-revert-use-notify is non-nil (and file notifications are actually supported), then magit-auto-revert-immediately does not have to be non-nil, because the reverts happen immediately anyway.

  If magit-auto-revert-immediately and auto-revert-use-notify are both nil, then reverts happen after auto-revert-interval seconds of user inactivity. That is not desirable.

• User Option: auto-revert-use-notify

  This option controls whether file notification functions should be used. Note that this variable unfortunately defaults to t even on systems on which file notifications cannot be used.

• User Option: magit-auto-revert-tracked-only

  This option controls whether magit-auto-revert-mode only reverts tracked files or all files that are located inside Git repositories, including untracked files and files located inside Git’s control directory.

• Command: auto-revert-mode

  The global mode magit-auto-revert-mode works by turning on this local mode in the appropriate buffers (but global-auto-revert-mode is implemented differently). You can also turn it on or off manually, which might be necessary if Magit does not notice that a previously untracked file now is being tracked or vice-versa.

• User Option: auto-revert-stop-on-user-input

  This option controls whether the arrival of user input suspends the automatic reverts for auto-revert-interval seconds.

• User Option: auto-revert-interval

  This option controls for how many seconds Emacs waits before resuming suspended reverts.

• User Option: auto-revert-buffer-list-filter

  This option specifies an additional filter used by auto-revert-buffers to determine whether a buffer should be reverted or not.

  This option is provided by magit, which also redefines auto-revert-buffers to respect it. Magit users who do not turn on the local mode auto-revert-mode themselves, are best served by setting the value to magit-auto-revert-repository-buffers-p.

  However the default is nil, to not disturb users who do use the local mode directly. If you experience delays when running Magit commands, then you should consider using one of the predicates provided by Magit - especially if you also use Tramp.

  Users who do turn on auto-revert-mode in buffers in which Magit doesn’t do that for them, should likely not use any filter. Users who turn on global-auto-revert-mode, do not have to worry about this option, because it is disregarded if the global mode is enabled.

• User Option: auto-revert-verbose

  This option controls whether Emacs reports when a buffer has been reverted.

The options with the auto-revert- prefix are located in the Custom group named auto-revert. The other, magit-specific, options are located in the magit group.

Risk of Reverting Automatically

For the vast majority users automatically reverting file-visiting buffers after they have changed on disk is harmless.

If a buffer is modified (i.e. it contains changes that haven’t been saved yet), then Emacs would refuse to automatically revert it. If you save a previously modified buffer, then that results in what is seen by Git as an uncommitted change. Git would then refuse to carry out any commands that would cause these changes to be lost. In other words, if there is anything that could be lost, then either Git or Emacs would refuse to discard the changes.

However if you do use file-visiting buffers as a sort of ad hoc “staging area”, then the automatic reverts could potentially cause data loss. So far I have only heard from one user who uses such a workflow.

An example: You visit some file in a buffer, edit it, and save the changes. Then, outside of Emacs (or at least not using Magit or by saving the buffer) you change the file on disk again. At this point the buffer is the only place where the intermediate version still exists. You have saved the changes to disk, but that has since been overwritten. Meanwhile Emacs considers the buffer to be unmodified (because you have not made any changes to it since you last saved it to the visited file) and therefore would not object to it being automatically reverted. At this point an Auto-Revert mode would kick in. It would check whether the buffer is modified and since that is not the case it would revert it. The intermediate version would be lost. (Actually you could still get it back using the undo command.)

If your workflow depends on Emacs preserving the intermediate version in the buffer, then you have to disable all Auto-Revert modes. But please consider that such a workflow would be dangerous even without using an Auto-Revert mode, and should therefore be avoided. If Emacs crashed or if you quit Emacs by mistake, then you would also lose the buffer content. There would be no autosave file still containing the intermediate version (because that was deleted when you saved the buffer) and you would not be asked whether you want to save the buffer (because it isn’t modified).

Sections

_

Magit buffers are organized into nested sections, which can be collapsed and expanded, similar to how sections are handled in Org mode. Each section also has a type, and some sections also have a value. For each section type there can also be a local keymap, shared by all sections of that type.

Taking advantage of the section value and type, many commands operate on the current section, or when the region is active and selects sections of the same type, all of the selected sections. Commands that only make sense for a particular section type (as opposed to just behaving differently depending on the type) are usually bound in section type keymaps.

Section Movement

To move within a section use the usual keys (C-p, C-n, C-b, C-f etc), whose global bindings are not shadowed. To move to another section use the following commands.

• Key: p, magit-section-backward

  When not at the beginning of a section, then move to the beginning of the current section. At the beginning of a section, instead move to the beginning of the previous visible section.

• Key: n, magit-section-forward

  Move to the beginning of the next visible section.

• Key: M-p, magit-section-backward-siblings

  Move to the beginning of the previous sibling section. If there is no previous sibling section, then move to the parent section instead.

• Key: M-n, magit-section-forward-siblings

  Move to the beginning of the next sibling section. If there is no next sibling section, then move to the parent section instead.

• Key: ^, magit-section-up

  Move to the beginning of the parent of the current section.

The above commands all call the hook magit-section-movement-hook. Any of the functions listed below can be used as members of this hook.

• Variable: magit-section-movement-hook

  This hook is run by all of the above movement commands, after arriving at the destination.

• Function: magit-hunk-set-window-start

  This hook function ensures that the beginning of the current section is visible, provided it is a hunk section. Otherwise, it does nothing. This function is a member of the hook’s default value.

• Function: magit-section-set-window-start

  This hook function ensures that the beginning of the current section is visible, regardless of the section’s type. If you add this to magit-section-movement-hook, then you must remove the hunk-only variant in turn.

• Function: magit-log-maybe-show-more-commits

  This hook function only has an effect in log buffers, and point is on the “show more” section. If that is the case, then it doubles the number of commits that are being shown. This function is a member of the hook’s default value.

• Function: magit-log-maybe-update-revision-buffer

  When moving inside a log buffer, then this function updates the revision buffer, provided it is already being displayed in another window of the same frame. This function is a member of the hook’s default value.

• Function: magit-log-maybe-update-blob-buffer

  When moving inside a log buffer and another window of the same frame displays a blob buffer, then this function instead displays the blob buffer for the commit at point in that window.

• Function: magit-status-maybe-update-revision-buffer

  When moving inside a status buffer, then this function updates the revision buffer, provided it is already being displayed in another window of the same frame.

• Function: magit-status-maybe-update-blob-buffer

  When moving inside a status buffer and another window of the same frame displays a blob buffer, then this function instead displays the blob buffer for the commit at point in that window.

• User Option: magit-update-other-window-delay

  Delay before automatically updating the other window.

  When moving around in certain buffers, then certain other buffers, which are being displayed in another window, may optionally be updated to display information about the section at point.

  When holding down a key to move by more than just one section, then that would update that buffer for each section on the way. To prevent that, updating the revision buffer is delayed, and this option controls for how long. For optimal experience you might have to adjust this delay and/or the keyboard repeat rate and delay of your graphical environment or operating system.

Section Visibility

Magit provides many commands for changing the visibility of sections, but all you need to get started are the next two.

• Key: TAB, magit-section-toggle

  Toggle the visibility of the body of the current section.

• Key: C-<tab>, magit-section-cycle

  Cycle the visibility of current section and its children.

• Key: M-<tab>, magit-section-cycle-diffs

  Cycle the visibility of diff-related sections in the current buffer.

• Key: S-<tab>, magit-section-cycle-global

  Cycle the visibility of all sections in the current buffer.

• Key: 1, magit-section-show-level-1
• Key: 2, magit-section-show-level-2
• Key: 3, magit-section-show-level-3
• Key: 4, magit-section-show-level-4

  Show sections surrounding the current section up to level N.

• Key: M-1, magit-section-show-level-1-all
• Key: M-2, magit-section-show-level-2-all
• Key: M-3, magit-section-show-level-3-all
• Key: M-4, magit-section-show-level-4-all

  Show all sections up to level N.

Some functions, which are used to implement the above commands, are also exposed as commands themselves. By default no keys are bound to these commands, as they are generally perceived to be much less useful. But your mileage may vary.

• Command: magit-section-show

  Show the body of the current section.

• Command: magit-section-hide

  Hide the body of the current section.

• Command: magit-section-show-headings

  Recursively show headings of children of the current section. Only show the headings. Previously shown text-only bodies are hidden.

• Command: magit-section-show-children

  Recursively show the bodies of children of the current section. With a prefix argument show children down to the level of the current section, and hide deeper children.

• Command: magit-section-hide-children

  Recursively hide the bodies of children of the current section.

• Command: magit-section-toggle-children

  Toggle visibility of bodies of children of the current section.

When a buffer is first created then some sections are shown expanded while others are not. This is hard coded. When a buffer is refreshed then the previous visibility is preserved. The initial visibility of certain sections can also be overwritten using the hook magit-section-set-visibility-hook.

• User Option: magit-section-initial-visibility-alist

  This options can be used to override the initial visibility of sections. In the future it will also be used to define the defaults, but currently a section’s default is still hardcoded.

  The value is an alist. Each element maps a section type or lineage to the initial visibility state for such sections. The state has to be one of show or hide, or a function that returns one of these symbols. A function is called with the section as the only argument.

  Use the command magit-describe-section-briefly to determine a section’s lineage or type. The vector in the output is the section lineage and the type is the first element of that vector. Wildcards can be used, see magit-section-match.

• User Option: magit-section-cache-visibility

  This option controls for which sections the previous visibility state should be restored if a section disappears and later appears again. The value is a boolean or a list of section types. If t, then the visibility of all sections is cached. Otherwise this is only done for sections whose type matches one of the listed types.

  This requires that the function magit-section-cached-visibility is a member of magit-section-set-visibility-hook.

• Variable: magit-section-set-visibility-hook

  This hook is run when first creating a buffer and also when refreshing an existing buffer, and is used to determine the visibility of the section currently being inserted.

  Each function is called with one argument, the section being inserted. It should return hide or show, or to leave the visibility undefined nil. If no function decides on the visibility and the buffer is being refreshed, then the visibility is preserved; or if the buffer is being created, then the hard coded default is used.

  Usually this should only be used to set the initial visibility but not during refreshes. If magit-insert-section--oldroot is non-nil, then the buffer is being refreshed and these functions should immediately return nil.

Section Hooks

Which sections are inserted into certain buffers is controlled with hooks. This includes the status and the refs buffers. For other buffers, e.g. log and diff buffers, this is not possible. The command magit-describe-section can be used to see which hook (if any) was responsible for inserting the section at point.

For buffers whose sections can be customized by the user, a hook variable called magit-TYPE-sections-hook exists. This hook should be changed using magit-add-section-hook. Avoid using add-hooks or the Custom interface.

The various available section hook variables are described later in this manual along with the appropriate “section inserter functions”.

• Function: magit-add-section-hook hook function &optional at append local

  Add the function FUNCTION to the value of section hook HOOK.

  Add FUNCTION at the beginning of the hook list unless optional APPEND is non-nil, in which case FUNCTION is added at the end. If FUNCTION already is a member then move it to the new location.

  If optional AT is non-nil and a member of the hook list, then add FUNCTION next to that instead. Add before or after AT, or replace AT with FUNCTION depending on APPEND. If APPEND is the symbol replace, then replace AT with FUNCTION. For any other non-nil value place FUNCTION right after AT. If nil, then place FUNCTION right before AT. If FUNCTION already is a member of the list but AT is not, then leave FUNCTION where ever it already is.

  If optional LOCAL is non-nil, then modify the hook’s buffer-local value rather than its global value. This makes the hook local by copying the default value. That copy is then modified.

  HOOK should be a symbol. If HOOK is void, it is first set to nil. HOOK’s value must not be a single hook function. FUNCTION should be a function that takes no arguments and inserts one or multiple sections at point, moving point forward. FUNCTION may choose not to insert its section(s), when doing so would not make sense. It should not be abused for other side-effects.

To remove a function from a section hook, use remove-hook.

Section Types and Values

Each section has a type, for example hunk, file, and commit. Instances of certain section types also have a value. The value of a section of type file, for example, is a file name.

Users usually do not have to worry about a section’s type and value, but knowing them can be handy at times.

• Key: M-x magit-describe-section-briefly, magit-describe-section-briefly

  Show information about the section at point in the echo area, as “#<magit-section VALUE [TYPE PARENT-TYPE…] BEGINNING-END>”.

Many commands behave differently depending on the type of the section at point and/or somehow consume the value of that section. But that is only one of the reasons why the same key may do something different, depending on what section is current.

Additionally for each section type a keymap might be defined, named magit-TYPE-section-map. That keymap is used as text property keymap of all text belonging to any section of the respective type. If such a map does not exist for a certain type, then you can define it yourself, and it will automatically be used.

Section Options

This section describes options that have an effect on more than just a certain type of sections. As you can see there are not many of those.

• User Option: magit-section-show-child-count

  Whether to append the number of children to section headings. This only affects sections that could benefit from this information.

Popup Buffers and Prefix Commands

Many Magit commands are implemented using popup buffers. First the user invokes a popup or prefix command, which causes a popup buffer with the available infix arguments and suffix commands to be displayed. The user then optionally toggles/sets some arguments and finally invokes one of the suffix commands.

This is implemented in the library magit-popup. Earlier releases used the library magit-key-mode. A future release will switch to a yet-to-be-written successor, which will likely be named transient.

Because magit-popup can also be used by other packages without having to depend on all of Magit, it is documented in its own manual. See info:magit-popup.

• Key: C-c C-c, magit-dispatch-popup

  This popup command shows a buffer featuring all other Magit popup commands as well as some other commands that are not popup commands themselves.

This command is also, or especially, useful outside Magit buffers, so you should setup a global binding:

(global-set-key (kbd "C-x M-g") 'magit-dispatch-popup)

Most popups set their initial arguments according to the corresponding magit-*-arguments variable. Two popups, the log and diff popups (see *Logging and *Diffing), may behave a bit differently, depending on the value of magit-use-sticky-arguments.

• User Option: magit-use-sticky-arguments

  This option controls how diff and log commands reuse arguments from existing buffers.

  When t (the default value), the log or diff popup reuses the arguments from the current repository’s log or diff buffer, respectively. When no log or diff buffer exists for the current repository, these popups use the default value of magit-log-arguments or magit-diff-arguments.

  When current, log and diff popups will only reuse the arguments if the current buffer is derived from magit-log-mode or magit-diff-mode, respectively.

  When nil, the default value of magit-log-arguments or magit-diff-arguments is always used.

Completion, Confirmation and the Selection

Action Confirmation

By default many actions that could potentially lead to data loss have to be confirmed. This includes many very common actions, so this can quickly become annoying. Many of these actions can be undone and if you have thought about how to undo certain mistakes, then it should be safe to disable confirmation for the respective actions.

The option magit-no-confirm can be used to tell Magit to perform certain actions without the user having to confirm them. Note that while this option can only be used to disable confirmation for a specific set of actions, the next section explains another way of telling Magit to ask fewer questions.

• User Option: magit-no-confirm

  The value of this option is a list of symbols, representing actions that do not have to be confirmed by the user before being carried out.

  By default many potentially dangerous commands ask the user for confirmation. Each of the below symbols stands for an action which, when invoked unintentionally or without being fully aware of the consequences, could lead to tears. In many cases there are several commands that perform variations of a certain action, so we don’t use the command names but more generic symbols.

  • Applying changes:
    • discard Discarding one or more changes (i.e. hunks or the complete diff for a file) loses that change, obviously.
    • reverse Reverting one or more changes can usually be undone by reverting the reversion.
    • stage-all-changes, unstage-all-changes When there are both staged and unstaged changes, then un-/staging everything would destroy that distinction. Of course that also applies when un-/staging a single change, but then less is lost and one does that so often that having to confirm every time would be unacceptable.
  • Files:
    • delete When a file that isn’t yet tracked by Git is deleted, then it is completely lost, not just the last changes. Very dangerous.
    • trash Instead of deleting a file it can also be move to the system trash. Obviously much less dangerous than deleting it.

      Also see option magit-delete-by-moving-to-trash.

    • resurrect A deleted file can easily be resurrected by “deleting” the deletion, which is done using the same command that was used to delete the same file in the first place.
    • untrack Untracking a file can be undone by tracking it again.
    • rename Renaming a file can easily be undone.
  • Sequences:
    • reset-bisect Aborting (known to Git as “resetting”) a bisect operation loses all information collected so far.
    • abort-rebase Aborting a rebase throws away all already modified commits, but it’s possible to restore those from the reflog.
    • abort-merge Aborting a merge throws away all conflict resolutions which have already been carried out by the user.
    • merge-dirty Merging with a dirty worktree can make it hard to go back to the state before the merge was initiated.
  • References:
    • delete-unmerged-branch Once a branch has been deleted, it can only be restored using low-level recovery tools provided by Git. And even then the reflog is gone. The user always has to confirm the deletion of a branch by accepting the default choice (or selecting another branch), but when a branch has not been merged yet, also make sure the user is aware of that.
    • delete-pr-branch When deleting a branch that was created from a pull request and if no other branches still exist on that remote, then `magit-branch-delete’ offers to delete the remote as well. This should be safe because it only happens if no other refs exist in the remotes namespace, and you can recreate the remote if necessary.
    • drop-stashes Dropping a stash is dangerous because Git stores stashes in the reflog. Once a stash is removed, there is no going back without using low-level recovery tools provided by Git. When a single stash is dropped, then the user always has to confirm by accepting the default (or selecting another). This action only concerns the deletion of multiple stashes at once.
  • Edit published history:

    Without adding these symbols here, you will be warned before editing commits that have already been pushed to one of the branches listed in magit-published-branches.

    • amend-published Affects most commands that amend to “HEAD”.
    • rebase-published Affects commands that perform interactive rebases. This includes commands from the commit popup that modify a commit other than “HEAD”, namely the various fixup and squash variants.
    • edit-published Affects the commands magit-edit-line-commit and magit-diff-edit-hunk-commit. These two commands make it quite easy to accidentally edit a published commit, so you should think twice before configuring them not to ask for confirmation.

    To disable confirmation completely, add all three symbols here or set magit-published-branches to nil.

  • Various:
    • kill-process There seldom is a reason to kill a process.
  • Global settings:

    Instead of adding all of the above symbols to the value of this option, you can also set it to the atom `t’, which has the same effect as adding all of the above symbols. Doing that most certainly is a bad idea, especially because other symbols might be added in the future. So even if you don’t want to be asked for confirmation for any of these actions, you are still better of adding all of the respective symbols individually.

    When magit-wip-before-change-mode is enabled, then the following actions can be undone fairly easily: discard, reverse, stage-all-changes, and unstage-all-changes. If and only if this mode is enabled, then safe-with-wip has the same effect as adding all of these symbols individually.

Completion and Confirmation

Many Magit commands ask the user to select from a list of possible things to act on, while offering the most likely choice as the default. For many of these commands the default is the thing at point, provided that it actually is a valid thing to act on. For many commands that act on a branch, the current branch serves as the default if there is no branch at point.

These commands combine asking for confirmation and asking for a target to act on into a single action. The user can confirm the default target using RET or abort using C-g. This is similar to a y-or-n-p prompt, but the keys to confirm or abort differ.

At the same time the user is also given the opportunity to select another target, which is useful because for some commands and/or in some situations you might want to select the action before selecting the target by moving to it.

However you might find that for some commands you always want to use the default target, if any, or even that you want the command to act on the default without requiring any confirmation at all. The option magit-dwim-selection can be used to configure certain commands to that effect.

Note that when the region is active then many commands act on the things that are selected using a mechanism based on the region, in many cases after asking for confirmation. This region-based mechanism is called the “selection” and is described in detail in the next section. When a selection exists that is valid for the invoked command, then that command never offers to act on something else, and whether it asks for confirmation is not controlled by this option.

Also note that Magit asks for confirmation of certain actions that are not coupled with completion (or the selection). Such dialogs are also not affected by this option and are described in the previous section.

• User Option: magit-dwim-selection

This option can be used to tell certain commands to use the thing at point instead of asking the user to select a candidate to act on, with or without confirmation.

The value has the form ((COMMAND nil|PROMPT DEFAULT)...).

• COMMAND is the command that should not prompt for a choice. To have an effect, the command has to use the function magit-completing-read or a utility function which in turn uses that function.
• If the command uses magit-completing-read multiple times, then PROMPT can be used to only affect one of these uses. PROMPT, if non-nil, is a regular expression that is used to match against the PROMPT argument passed to magit-completing-read.
• DEFAULT specifies how to use the default. If it is t, then the DEFAULT argument passed to magit-completing-read is used without confirmation. If it is ask, then the user is given a chance to abort. DEFAULT can also be nil, in which case the entry has no effect.

The Selection

If the region is active, then many Magit commands act on the things that are selected using a mechanism based on the region instead of one single thing. When the region is not active, then these commands act on the thing at point or read a single thing to act on. This is described in the previous section — this section only covers how multiple things are selected, how that is visualized, and how certain commands behave when that is the case.

Magit’s mechanism for selecting multiple things, or rather sections that represent these things, is based on the Emacs region, but the area that Magit considers to be selected is typically larger than the region and additional restrictions apply.

Magit makes a distinction between a region that qualifies as forming a valid Magit selection and a region that does not. If the region does not qualify, then it is displayed as it is in other Emacs buffers. If the region does qualify as a Magit selection, then the selection is always visualized, while the region itself is only visualized if it begins and ends on the same line.

For a region to qualify as a Magit selection, it must begin in the heading of one section and end in the heading of a sibling section. Note that if the end of the region is at the very beginning of section heading (i.e. at the very beginning of a line) then that section is considered to be inside the selection.

This is not consistent with how the region is normally treated in Emacs — if the region ends at the beginning of a line, then that line is outside the region. Due to how Magit visualizes the selection, it should be obvious that this difference exists.

Not every command acts on every valid selection. Some commands do not even consider the location of point, others may act on the section at point but not support acting on the selection, and even commands that do support the selection of course only do so if it selects things that they can act on.

This is the main reason why the selection must include the section at point. Even if a selection exists, the invoked command may disregard it, in which case it may act on the current section only. It is much safer to only act on the current section but not the other selected sections than it is to act on the current section instead of the selected sections. The latter would be much more surprising and if the current section always is part of the selection, then that cannot happen.

• Variable: magit-keep-region-overlay

  This variable controls whether the region is visualized as usual even when a valid Magit selection or a hunk-internal region exists. See the doc-string for more information.

The hunk-internal region

Somewhat related to the Magit selection described in the previous section is the hunk-internal region.

Like the selection, the hunk-internal region is based on the Emacs region but causes that region to not be visualized as it would in other Emacs buffers, and includes the line on which the region ends even if it ends at the very beginning of that line.

Unlike the selection, which is based on a region that must begin in the heading of one section and ends in the section of a sibling section, the hunk-internal region must begin inside the body of a hunk section and end in the body of the same section.

The hunk-internal region is honored by “apply” commands, which can, among other targets, act on a hunk. If the hunk-internal region is active, then such commands act only on the marked part of the hunk instead of on the complete hunk.

Support for Completion Frameworks

The built-in option completing-read-function specifies the low-level function used by completing-read to ask a user to select from a list of choices. Its default value is completing-read-default. Alternative completion frameworks typically activate themselves by substituting their own implementation.

Mostly for historic reasons Magit provides a similar option named magit-completing-read-function, which only controls the low-level function used by magit-completing-read. This option also makes it possible to use a different completing mechanism for Magit than for the rest of Emacs, but doing that is not recommend.

You most likely don’t have to customize the magit-specific option to use an alternative completion framework. For example, if you enable ivy-mode, then Magit will respect that, and if you enable helm-mode, then you are done too.

However if you want to use Ido, then ido-mode won’t do the trick. You will also have to install the ido-completing-read+ package and use magit-ido-completing-read as magit-completing-read-function.

• User Option: magit-completing-read-function

  The value of this variable is the low-level function used to perform completion by code that uses magit-completing-read (as opposed to the built-in completing-read).

  The default value, magit-builtin-completing-read, is suitable for the standard completion mechanism, ivy-mode, and helm-mode at least.

  The built-in completing-read and completing-read-default are not suitable to be used here. magit-builtin-completing-read performs some additional work, and any function used in its place has to do the same.

• Function: magit-builtin-completing-read prompt choices &optional predicate require-match initial-input hist def

  This function performs completion using the built-in completion-read and does some additional magit-specific work.

• Function: magit-ido-completing-read prompt choices &optional predicate require-match initial-input hist def

  This function performs completion using ido-completing-read+ from the package by the same name (which you have to explicitly install) and does some additional magit-specific work.

  We have to use ido-completing-read+ instead of the ido-completing-read that comes with Ido itself, because the latter, while intended as a drop-in replacement, cannot serve that purpose because it violates too many of the implicit conventions.

• Function: magit-completing-read prompt choices &optional predicate require-match initial-input hist def fallback

  This is the function that Magit commands use when they need the user to select a single thing to act on. The arguments have the same meaning as for completing-read, except for FALLBACK, which is unique to this function and is described below.

  Instead of asking the user to choose from a list of possible candidates, this function may just return the default specified by DEF, with or without requiring user confirmation. Whether that is the case depends on PROMPT, this-command and magit-dwim-selection. See the documentation of the latter for more information.

  If it does read a value in the minibuffer, then this function acts similar to completing-read, except for the following:

  • If REQUIRE-MATCH is nil and the user exits without a choice, then nil is returned instead of an empty string.
  • If REQUIRE-MATCH is non-nil and the users exits without a choice, an user-error is raised.
  • FALLBACK specifies a secondary default that is only used if the primary default DEF is nil. The secondary default is not subject to magit-dwim-selection — if DEF is nil but FALLBACK is not, then this function always asks the user to choose a candidate, just as if both defaults were nil.
  • ”: ” is appended to PROMPT.
  • PROMPT is modified to end with " (default DEF|FALLBACK): " provided that DEF or FALLBACK is non-nil, that neither ivy-mode nor helm-mode is enabled, and that magit-completing-read-function is set to its default value of magit-builtin-completing-read.

Additional Completion Options

• User Option: magit-list-refs-sortby

  For many commands that read a ref or refs from the user, the value of this option can be used to control the order of the refs. Valid values include any key accepted by the --sort flag of git for-each-ref. By default, refs are sorted alphabetically by their full name (e.g., “refs/heads/master”).

Running Git

Viewing Git Output

Magit runs Git either for side-effects (e.g. when pushing) or to get some value (e.g. the name of the current branch).

When Git is run for side-effects, the process output is logged in a per-repository log buffer, which can be consulted using the magit-process command when things don’t go as expected.

The output/errors for up to `magit-process-log-max’ Git commands are retained.

• Key: $, magit-process

  This commands displays the process buffer for the current repository.

Inside that buffer, the usual key bindings for navigating and showing sections are available. There is one additional command.

• Key: k, magit-process-kill

  This command kills the process represented by the section at point.

• User Option: magit-git-debug

  When this is non-nil then the output of all calls to git are logged in the process buffer. This is useful when debugging, otherwise it just negatively affects performance.

Git Process Status

When a Git process is running for side-effects, Magit displays an indicator in the mode line, using the magit-mode-line-process face.

If the Git process exits successfully, the process indicator is removed from the mode line immediately.

In the case of a Git error, the process indicator is not removed, but is instead highlighted with the magit-mode-line-process-error face, and the error details from the process buffer are provided as a tooltip for mouse users. This error indicator persists in the mode line until the next magit buffer refresh.

If you do not wish process errors to be indicated in the mode line, customize the magit-process-display-mode-line-error user option.

Process errors are additionally indicated at the top of the status buffer.

Running Git Manually

While Magit provides many Emacs commands to interact with Git, it does not cover everything. In those cases your existing Git knowledge will come in handy. Magit provides some commands for running arbitrary Git commands by typing them into the minibuffer, instead of having to switch to a shell.

• Key: !, magit-run-popup

  Shows the popup buffer featuring the below suffix commands.

• Key: ! !, magit-git-command-topdir

  This command reads a command from the user and executes it in the top-level directory of the current working tree.

  The string “git ” is used as initial input when prompting the user for the command. It can be removed to run another command.

• Key: ! p, magit-git-command

  This command reads a command from the user and executes it in default-directory. With a prefix argument the command is executed in the top-level directory of the current working tree instead.

  The string “git ” is used as initial input when prompting the user for the command. It can be removed to run another command.

• Key: ! s, magit-shell-command-topdir

  This command reads a command from the user and executes it in the top-level directory of the current working tree.

• Key: ! S, magit-shell-command

  This command reads a command from the user and executes it in default-directory. With a prefix argument the command is executed in the top-level directory of the current working tree instead.

• User Option: magit-shell-command-verbose-prompt

  Whether the prompt, used by the the above commands when reading a shell command, shows the directory in which it will be run.

These suffix commands start external gui tools.

• Key: ! k, magit-run-gitk

  This command runs gitk in the current repository.

• Key: ! a, magit-run-gitk-all

  This command runs gitk --all in the current repository.

• Key: ! b, magit-run-gitk-branches

  This command runs gitk --branches in the current repository.

• Key: ! g, magit-run-git-gui

  This command runs git gui in the current repository.

Git Executable

Except on MS Windows, Magit defaults to running Git without specifying the path to the git executable. Instead the first executable found by Emacs on exec-path is used (whose value in turn is set based on the value of the environment variable $PATH when Emacs was started).

This has the advantage that it continues to work even when using Tramp to connect to a remote machine on which the executable is found in a different place. The downside is that if you have multiple versions of Git installed, then you might end up using another version than the one you think you are using.

• Key: M-x magit-version, magit-version

  This command shows the currently used versions of Magit, Git, and Emacs in the echo area. Non-interactively this just returns the Magit version.

When the system-type is windows-nt, then magit-git-executable is set to an absolute path when Magit is first loaded. This is necessary because Git on that platform comes with several wrapper scripts for the actual git binary, which are also placed on $PATH, and using one of these wrappers instead of the binary would degrade performance horribly.

If Magit doesn’t find the correct executable then you can work around that by setting magit-git-executable to an absolute path. But note that doing so is a kludge. It is better to make sure the order in the environment variable $PATH is correct, and that Emacs is started with that environment in effect. The command magit-debug-git-executable can be useful to find out where Emacs is searching for git. If you have to connect from Windows to a non-Windows machine, then you must change the value to “git”.

• User Option: magit-git-executable

  The git executable used by Magit, either the full path to the executable or the string “git” to let Emacs find the executable itself, using the standard mechanism for doing such things.

• Key: M-x magit-debug-git-executable, magit-debug-git-executable

  Display a buffer with information about magit-git-executable.

Global Git Arguments

• User Option: magit-git-global-arguments

  The arguments set here are used every time the git executable is run as a subprocess. They are placed right after the executable itself and before the git command - as in git HERE... COMMAND REST. For valid arguments see man:git

  Be careful what you add here, especially if you are using Tramp to connect to servers with ancient Git versions. Never remove anything that is part of the default value, unless you really know what you are doing. And think very hard before adding something; it will be used every time Magit runs Git for any purpose.

Inspecting

_

The functionality provided by Magit can be roughly divided into three groups: inspecting existing data, manipulating existing data or adding new data, and transferring data. Of course that is a rather crude distinction that often falls short, but it’s more useful than no distinction at all. This section is concerned with inspecting data, the next two with manipulating and transferring it. Then follows a section about miscellaneous functionality, which cannot easily be fit into this distinction.

Of course other distinctions make sense too, e.g. Git’s distinction between porcelain and plumbing commands, which for the most part is equivalent to Emacs’ distinction between interactive commands and non-interactive functions. All of the sections mentioned before are mainly concerned with the porcelain – Magit’s plumbing layer is described later.

Status Buffer

_

While other Magit buffers contain e.g. one particular diff or one particular log, the status buffer contains the diffs for staged and unstaged changes, logs for unpushed and unpulled commits, lists of stashes and untracked files, and information related to the current branch.

During certain incomplete operations – for example when a merge resulted in a conflict – additional information is displayed that helps proceeding with or aborting the operation.

The command magit-status displays the status buffer belonging to the current repository in another window. This command is used so often that it should be bound globally. We recommend using C-x g:

(global-set-key (kbd "C-x g") 'magit-status)

• Key: C-x g, magit-status

  Show the status of the current Git repository in a buffer. With a prefix argument prompt for a repository to be shown. With two prefix arguments prompt for an arbitrary directory. If that directory isn’t the root of an existing repository, then offer to initialize it as a new repository.

• User Option: magit-repository-directories

  List of directories that are Git repositories or contain Git repositories.

  Each element has the form (DIRECTORY . DEPTH). DIRECTORY has to be a directory or a directory file-name, a string. DEPTH, an integer, specifies the maximum depth to look for Git repositories. If it is 0, then only add DIRECTORY itself.

• User Option: magit-repository-directories-depth

  The maximum depth to look for Git repositories. This option is obsolete and only used for elements of the option magit-repository-directories (which see) that don’t specify the depth directly.

• Command: ido-enter-magit-status

  From an Ido prompt used to open a file, instead drop into magit-status. This is similar to ido-magic-delete-char, which, despite its name, usually causes a Dired buffer to be created.

  To make this command available, use something like:

  (add-hook 'ido-setup-hook
            (lambda ()
              (define-key ido-completion-map
                (kbd \"C-x g\") 'ido-enter-magit-status)))
      

  Starting with Emacs 25.1 the Ido keymaps are defined just once instead of every time Ido is invoked, so now you can modify it like pretty much every other keymap:

  (define-key ido-common-completion-map
    (kbd \"C-x g\") 'ido-enter-magit-status)
      

Status Sections

The contents of status buffers is controlled using the hook magit-status-sections-hook. See *Section Hooks to learn about such hooks and how to customize them.

• User Option: magit-status-sections-hook

  Hook run to insert sections into a status buffer.

The first function on that hook by default is magit-insert-status-headers; it is described in the next section. By default the following functions are also members of that hook:

• Function: magit-insert-merge-log

  Insert section for the on-going merge. Display the heads that are being merged. If no merge is in progress, do nothing.

• Function: magit-insert-rebase-sequence

  Insert section for the on-going rebase sequence. If no such sequence is in progress, do nothing.

• Function: magit-insert-am-sequence

  Insert section for the on-going patch applying sequence. If no such sequence is in progress, do nothing.

• Function: magit-insert-sequencer-sequence

  Insert section for the on-going cherry-pick or revert sequence. If no such sequence is in progress, do nothing.

• Function: magit-insert-bisect-output

  While bisecting, insert section with output from git bisect.

• Function: magit-insert-bisect-rest

  While bisecting, insert section visualizing the bisect state.

• Function: magit-insert-bisect-log

  While bisecting, insert section logging bisect progress.

• Function: magit-insert-untracked-files

  Maybe insert a list or tree of untracked files.

  Do so depending on the value of status.showUntrackedFiles. Note that even if the value is all, Magit still initially only shows directories. But the directory sections can then be expanded using TAB.

• Function: magit-insert-unstaged-changes

  Insert section showing unstaged changes.

• Function: magit-insert-staged-changes

  Insert section showing staged changes.

• Function: magit-insert-stashes &optional ref heading

  Insert the stashes section showing reflog for “refs/stash”. If optional REF is non-nil show reflog for that instead. If optional HEADING is non-nil use that as section heading instead of “Stashes:”.

• Function: magit-insert-unpulled-from-upstream

  Insert section showing commits that haven’t been pulled from the upstream branch yet.

• Function: magit-insert-unpulled-from-pushremote

  Insert section showing commits that haven’t been pulled from the push-remote branch yet.

• Function: magit-insert-unpushed-to-upstream

  Insert section showing commits that haven’t been pushed to the upstream yet.

• Function: magit-insert-unpushed-to-pushremote

  Insert section showing commits that haven’t been pushed to the push-remote yet.

The following functions can also be added to the above hook:

• Function: magit-insert-tracked-files

  Insert a tree of tracked files.

• Function: magit-insert-ignored-files

  Insert a tree of ignored files.

  If the first element of magit-diff-section-arguments is a directory, then limit the list to files below that. The value of that variable can be set using D = f <DIRECTORY> RET g.

• Function: magit-insert-unpulled-or-recent-commits

  Insert section showing unpulled or recent commits. If an upstream is configured for the current branch and it is ahead of the current branch, then show the missing commits. Otherwise, show the last magit-log-section-commit-count commits.

• Function: magit-insert-recent-commits

  Insert section showing the last magit-log-section-commit-count commits.

• User Option: magit-log-section-commit-count

  How many recent commits magit-insert-recent-commits and magit-insert-unpulled-or-recent-commits (provided there are no unpulled commits) show.

• Function: magit-insert-unpulled-cherries

  Insert section showing unpulled commits. Like magit-insert-unpulled-commits but prefix each commit that has not been applied yet (i.e. a commit with a patch-id not shared with any local commit) with “+”, and all others with “-“.

• Function: magit-insert-unpushed-cherries

  Insert section showing unpushed commits. Like magit-insert-unpushed-commits but prefix each commit which has not been applied to upstream yet (i.e. a commit with a patch-id not shared with any upstream commit) with “+” and all others with “-“.

See *References Buffer for some more section inserters, which could be used here.

Status Header Sections

The contents of status buffers is controlled using the hook magit-status-sections-hook (see *Status Sections).

By default magit-insert-status-headers is the first member of that hook variable.

• Function: magit-insert-status-headers

  Insert headers sections appropriate for magit-status-mode buffers. The sections are inserted by running the functions on the hook magit-status-headers-hook.

• User Option: magit-status-headers-hook

  Hook run to insert headers sections into the status buffer.

  This hook is run by magit-insert-status-headers, which in turn has to be a member of magit-status-sections-hook to be used at all.

By default the following functions are members of the above hook:

• Function: magit-insert-error-header

  Insert a header line showing the message about the Git error that just occurred.

  This function is only aware of the last error that occur when Git was run for side-effects. If, for example, an error occurs while generating a diff, then that error won’t be inserted. Refreshing the status buffer causes this section to disappear again.

• Function: magit-insert-diff-filter-header

  Insert a header line showing the effective diff filters.

• Function: magit-insert-head-branch-header

  Insert a header line about the current branch or detached HEAD.

• Function: magit-insert-upstream-branch-header

  Insert a header line about the branch that is usually pulled into the current branch.

• Function: magit-insert-push-branch-header

  Insert a header line about the branch that the current branch is usually pushed to.

• Function: magit-insert-tags-header

  Insert a header line about the current and/or next tag, along with the number of commits between the tag and HEAD.

The following functions can also be added to the above hook:

• Function: magit-insert-repo-header

  Insert a header line showing the path to the repository top-level.

• Function: magit-insert-remote-header

  Insert a header line about the remote of the current branch.

  If no remote is configured for the current branch, then fall back showing the “origin” remote, or if that does not exist the first remote in alphabetic order.

• Function: magit-insert-user-header

  Insert a header line about the current user.

Status Module Sections

The contents of status buffers is controlled using the hook magit-status-sections-hook (see *Status Sections).

By default magit-insert-modules is not a member of that hook variable.

• Function: magit-insert-modules

  Insert submodule sections.

  Hook magit-module-sections-hook controls which module sections are inserted, and option magit-module-sections-nested controls whether they are wrapped in an additional section.

• User Option: magit-module-sections-hook

  Hook run by magit-insert-modules.

• User Option: magit-module-sections-nested

  This option controls whether magit-insert-modules wraps inserted sections in an additional section.

  If this is non-nil, then only a single top-level section is inserted. If it is nil, then all sections listed in magit-module-sections-hook become top-level sections.

• Function: magit-insert-modules-overview

  Insert sections for all submodules. For each section insert the path, the branch, and the output of git describe --tags, or, failing that, the abbreviated HEAD commit hash.

  Press RET on such a submodule section to show its own status buffer. Press RET on the “Modules” section to display a list of submodules in a separate buffer. This shows additional information not displayed in the super-repository’s status buffer.

• Function: magit-insert-modules-unpulled-from-upstream

  Insert sections for modules that haven’t been pulled from the upstream yet. These sections can be expanded to show the respective commits.

• Function: magit-insert-modules-unpulled-from-pushremote

  Insert sections for modules that haven’t been pulled from the push-remote yet. These sections can be expanded to show the respective commits.

• Function: magit-insert-modules-unpushed-to-upstream

  Insert sections for modules that haven’t been pushed to the upstream yet. These sections can be expanded to show the respective commits.

• Function: magit-insert-modules-unpushed-to-pushremote

  Insert sections for modules that haven’t been pushed to the push-remote yet. These sections can be expanded to show the respective commits.

Status Options

• User Option: magit-status-refresh-hook

  Hook run after a status buffer has been refreshed.

• User Option: magit-status-margin

  This option specifies whether the margin is initially shown in Magit-Status mode buffers and how it is formatted.

  The value has the form (INIT STYLE WIDTH AUTHOR AUTHOR-WIDTH).

  • If INIT is non-nil, then the margin is shown initially.
  • STYLE controls how to format the committer date. It can be one of age (to show the age of the commit), age-abbreviated (to abbreviate the time unit to a character), or a string (suitable for format-time-string) to show the actual date.
  • WIDTH controls the width of the margin. This exists for forward compatibility and currently the value should not be changed.
  • AUTHOR controls whether the name of the author is also shown by default.
  • AUTHOR-WIDTH has to be an integer. When the name of the author is shown, then this specifies how much space is used to do so.
• User Option: magit-log-section-args

  Additional Git arguments used when creating log sections. Only --graph, --decorate, and --show-signature are supported. This option is only a temporary kludge and will be removed.

  Note that due to an issue in Git the use of --graph is very slow with long histories, so you probably don’t want to add this here.

Also see the proceeding section for more options concerning status buffers.

Repository List

• Command: magit-list-repositories

  This command displays a list of repositories in a separate buffer.

  The options magit-repository-directories and magit-repository-directories-depth control which repositories are displayed.

• User Option: magit-repolist-columns

  This option controls what columns are displayed by the command magit-list-repositories and how they are displayed.

  Each element has the form (HEADER WIDTH FORMAT PROPS).

  HEADER is the string displayed in the header. WIDTH is the width of the column. FORMAT is a function that is called with one argument, the repository identification (usually its basename), and with default-directory bound to the toplevel of its working tree. It has to return a string to be inserted or nil. PROPS is an alist that supports the keys :right-align and :pad-right.

The following functions can be added to the above option:

• Function: magit-repolist-column-ident

  This function inserts the identification of the repository. Usually this is just its basename.

• Function: magit-repolist-column-path

  This function inserts the absolute path of the repository.

• Function: magit-repolist-column-version

  This function inserts a description of the repository’s HEAD revision.

• Function: magit-repolist-column-unpulled-from-upstream

  This function inserts the number of upstream commits not in the current branch.

• Function: magit-repolist-column-unpulled-from-pushremote

  This function inserts the number of commits in the push branch but not the current branch.

• Function: magit-repolist-column-unpushed-to-upstream

  This function inserts the number of commits in the current branch but not its upstream.

• Function: magit-repolist-column-unpushed-to-pushremote

  This function inserts the number of commits in the current branch but not its push branch.

Logging

_

The status buffer contains logs for the unpushed and unpulled commits, but that obviously isn’t enough. The prefix command magit-log-popup, on l, features several suffix commands, which show a specific log in a separate log buffer.

Like other popups, the log popup also features several arguments that can be changed before invoking one of the suffix commands. However, in the case of the log popup, these arguments may be taken from those currently in use in the current repository’s log buffer, depending on the value of magit-use-sticky-arguments (see <a href=”*Popup Buffers and Prefix Commands”>*Popup Buffers and Prefix Commands).

For information about the various arguments, see man:git-log The switch ++order=VALUE is converted to one of --author-date-order, --date-order, or --topo-order before being passed to git log.

The log popup also features several reflog commands. See *Reflog.

• Key: l, magit-log-popup

  This prefix command shows the following suffix commands along with the appropriate infix arguments in a popup buffer.

• Key: l l, magit-log-current

  Show log for the current branch. When HEAD is detached or with a prefix argument, show log for one or more revs read from the minibuffer.

• Key: l o, magit-log

  Show log for one or more revs read from the minibuffer. The user can input any revision or revisions separated by a space, or even ranges, but only branches, tags, and a representation of the commit at point are available as completion candidates.

• Key: l h, magit-log-head

  Show log for HEAD.

• Key: l L, magit-log-branches

  Show log for all local branches and HEAD.

• Key: l b, magit-log-all-branches

  Show log for all local and remote branches and HEAD.

• Key: l a, magit-log-all

  Show log for all references and HEAD.

Two additional commands that show the log for the file or blob that is being visited in the current buffer exists, see <a href=”*Minor Mode for Buffers Visiting Files”>*Minor Mode for Buffers Visiting Files. The command magit-cherry also shows a log, see *Cherries.

Refreshing Logs

The prefix command magit-log-refresh-popup, on L, can be used to change the log arguments used in the current buffer, without changing which log is shown. This works in dedicated log buffers, but also in the status buffer.

• Key: L, magit-log-refresh-popup

  This prefix command shows the following suffix commands along with the appropriate infix arguments in a popup buffer.

• Key: L g, magit-log-refresh

  This suffix command sets the local log arguments for the current buffer.

• Key: L s, magit-log-set-default-arguments

  This suffix command sets the default log arguments for buffers of the same type as that of the current buffer. Other existing buffers of the same type are not affected because their local values have already been initialized.

• Key: L w, magit-log-save-default-arguments

  This suffix command sets the default log arguments for buffers of the same type as that of the current buffer, and saves the value for future sessions. Other existing buffers of the same type are not affected because their local values have already been initialized.

• Key: L t, magit-toggle-margin

  Show or hide the margin.

Log Buffer

• Key: L, magit-log-refresh-popup

  This prefix command shows the following suffix commands along with the appropriate infix arguments in a popup buffer. See <a href=”*Refreshing Logs”>*Refreshing Logs.

• Key: q, magit-log-bury-buffer

  Bury the current buffer or the revision buffer in the same frame. Like magit-mode-bury-buffer (which see) but with a negative prefix argument instead bury the revision buffer, provided it is displayed in the current frame.

• Key: C-c C-b, magit-go-backward

  Move backward in current buffer’s history.

• Key: C-c C-f, magit-go-forward

  Move forward in current buffer’s history.

• Key: C-c C-n, magit-log-move-to-parent

  Move to a parent of the current commit. By default, this is the first parent, but a numeric prefix can be used to specify another parent.

• Key: SPC, magit-diff-show-or-scroll-up

  Update the commit or diff buffer for the thing at point.

  Either show the commit or stash at point in the appropriate buffer, or if that buffer is already being displayed in the current frame and contains information about that commit or stash, then instead scroll the buffer up. If there is no commit or stash at point, then prompt for a commit.

• Key: DEL, magit-diff-show-or-scroll-down

  Update the commit or diff buffer for the thing at point.

  Either show the commit or stash at point in the appropriate buffer, or if that buffer is already being displayed in the current frame and contains information about that commit or stash, then instead scroll the buffer down. If there is no commit or stash at point, then prompt for a commit.

• Key: =, magit-log-toggle-commit-limit

  Toggle the number of commits the current log buffer is limited to. If the number of commits is currently limited, then remove that limit. Otherwise set it to 256.

• Key: +, magit-log-double-commit-limit

  Double the number of commits the current log buffer is limited to.

• Key: -, magit-log-half-commit-limit

  Half the number of commits the current log buffer is limited to.

• User Option: magit-log-auto-more

  Insert more log entries automatically when moving past the last entry. Only considered when moving past the last entry with magit-goto-*-section commands.

• User Option: magit-log-show-refname-after-summary

  Whether to show the refnames after the commit summaries. This is useful if you use really long branch names.

Magit displays references in logs a bit differently from how Git does it.

Local branches are blue and remote branches are green. Of course that depends on the used theme, as do the colors used for other types of references. The current branch has a box around it, as do remote branches that are their respective remote’s HEAD branch.

If a local branch and its push-target point at the same commit, then their names are combined to preserve space and to make that relationship visible. For example:

origin/feature
[green][blue-]

instead of

feature origin/feature
[blue-] [green-------]

Also note that while the popup features the --show-signature argument, that won’t actually be used when enabled, because Magit defaults to use just one line per commit. Instead the commit colorized to indicate the validity of the signed commit object, using the faces named magit-signature-* (which see).

For a description of magit-log-margin see *Log Margin.

Log Margin

In buffers which show one or more logs, it is possible to show additional information about each commit in the margin. The options used to configure the margin are named magit-INFIX-margin, where INFIX is the same as in the respective major-mode magit-INFIX-mode. In regular log buffers that would be magit-log-margin.

• User Option: magit-log-margin

  This option specifies whether the margin is initially shown in Magit-Log mode buffers and how it is formatted.

  The value has the form (INIT STYLE WIDTH AUTHOR AUTHOR-WIDTH).

  • If INIT is non-nil, then the margin is shown initially.
  • STYLE controls how to format the committer date. It can be one of age (to show the age of the commit), age-abbreviated (to abbreviate the time unit to a character), or a string (suitable for format-time-string) to show the actual date.
  • WIDTH controls the width of the margin. This exists for forward compatibility and currently the value should not be changed.
  • AUTHOR controls whether the name of the author is also shown by default.
  • AUTHOR-WIDTH has to be an integer. When the name of the author is shown, then this specifies how much space is used to do so.

You can change the STYLE and AUTHOR-WIDTH of all magit-INFIX-margin options to the same values by customizing magit-log-margin before magit is loaded. If you do that, then the respective values for the other options will default to what you have set for that variable. Likewise if you set INIT in magit-log-margin to nil, then that is used in the default of all other options. But setting it to t, i.e. re-enforcing the default for that option, does not carry to other options.

• Key: L, magit-margin-popup

  This prefix command features the following commands for changing the appearance of the margin.

In some buffers that support the margin, “L” is bound to magit-log-refresh-popup, but that popup features the same commands, and then some other unrelated commands.

• Key: L L, magit-toggle-margin

  This command shows or hides the margin.

• Key: L l, magit-cycle-margin-style

  This command cycles the style used for the margin.

• Key: L d, magit-toggle-margin-details

  This command shows or hides details in the margin.

Select from Log

When the user has to select a recent commit that is reachable from HEAD, using regular completion would be inconvenient (because most humans cannot remember hashes or “HEAD~5”, at least not without double checking). Instead a log buffer is used to select the commit, which has the advantage that commits are presented in order and with the commit message.

Such selection logs are used when selecting the beginning of a rebase and when selecting the commit to be squashed into.

In addition to the key bindings available in all log buffers, the following additional key bindings are available in selection log buffers:

• Key: C-c C-c, magit-log-select-pick

  Select the commit at point and act on it. Call magit-log-select-pick-function with the selected commit as argument.

• Key: C-c C-k, magit-log-select-quit

  Abort selecting a commit, don’t act on any commit.

• User Option: magit-log-select-margin

  This option specifies whether the margin is initially shown in Magit-Log-Select mode buffers and how it is formatted.

  The value has the form (INIT STYLE WIDTH AUTHOR AUTHOR-WIDTH).

  • If INIT is non-nil, then the margin is shown initially.
  • STYLE controls how to format the committer date. It can be one of age (to show the age of the commit), age-abbreviated (to abbreviate the time unit to a character), or a string (suitable for format-time-string) to show the actual date.
  • WIDTH controls the width of the margin. This exists for forward compatibility and currently the value should not be changed.
  • AUTHOR controls whether the name of the author is also shown by default.
  • AUTHOR-WIDTH has to be an integer. When the name of the author is shown, then this specifies how much space is used to do so.

Reflog

Also see man:git-reflog

These reflog commands are available from the log popup. See *Logging.

• Key: l r, magit-reflog-current

  Display the reflog of the current branch.

• Key: l O, magit-reflog-other

  Display the reflog of a branch.

• Key: l H, magit-reflog-head

  Display the HEAD reflog.

• User Option: magit-reflog-margin

  This option specifies whether the margin is initially shown in Magit-Reflog mode buffers and how it is formatted.

  The value has the form (INIT STYLE WIDTH AUTHOR AUTHOR-WIDTH).

  • If INIT is non-nil, then the margin is shown initially.
  • STYLE controls how to format the committer date. It can be one of age (to show the age of the commit), age-abbreviated (to abbreviate the time unit to a character), or a string (suitable for format-time-string) to show the actual date.
  • WIDTH controls the width of the margin. This exists for forward compatibility and currently the value should not be changed.
  • AUTHOR controls whether the name of the author is also shown by default.
  • AUTHOR-WIDTH has to be an integer. When the name of the author is shown, then this specifies how much space is used to do so.

Cherries

Cherries are commits that haven’t been applied upstream (yet), and are usually visualized using a log. Each commit is prefixed with - if it has an equivalent in the upstream and + if it does not, i.e. if it is a cherry.

The command magit-cherry shows cherries for a single branch, but the references buffer (see *References Buffer) can show cherries for multiple “upstreams” at once.

Also see man:git-reflog

• Key: Y, magit-cherry

  Show commits that are in a certain branch but that have not been merged in the upstream branch.

• User Option: magit-cherry-margin

  This option specifies whether the margin is initially shown in Magit-Cherry mode buffers and how it is formatted.

  The value has the form (INIT STYLE WIDTH AUTHOR AUTHOR-WIDTH).

  • If INIT is non-nil, then the margin is shown initially.
  • STYLE controls how to format the committer date. It can be one of age (to show the age of the commit), age-abbreviated (to abbreviate the time unit to a character), or a string (suitable for format-time-string) to show the actual date.
  • WIDTH controls the width of the margin. This exists for forward compatibility and currently the value should not be changed.
  • AUTHOR controls whether the name of the author is also shown by default.
  • AUTHOR-WIDTH has to be an integer. When the name of the author is shown, then this specifies how much space is used to do so.

Diffing

_

The status buffer contains diffs for the staged and unstaged commits, but that obviously isn’t enough. The prefix command magit-diff-popup, on d, features several suffix commands, which show a specific diff in a separate diff buffer.

Like other popups, the diff popup also features several arguments that can be changed before invoking one of the suffix commands. However, in the case of the diff popup, these arguments may be taken from those currently in use in the current repository’s log buffer, depending on the value of magit-use-sticky-arguments (see <a href=”*Popup Buffers and Prefix Commands”>*Popup Buffers and Prefix Commands).

Also see man:git-diff

• Key: d, magit-diff-popup

  This prefix command shows the following suffix commands along with the appropriate infix arguments in a popup buffer.

• Key: d d, magit-diff-dwim

  Show changes for the thing at point.

• Key: d r, magit-diff

  Show differences between two commits.

  RANGE should be a range (A..B or A…B) but can also be a single commit. If one side of the range is omitted, then it defaults to HEAD. If just a commit is given, then changes in the working tree relative to that commit are shown.

  If the region is active, use the revisions on the first and last line of the region. With a prefix argument, instead of diffing the revisions, choose a revision to view changes along, starting at the common ancestor of both revisions (i.e., use a “…” range).

• Key: d w, magit-diff-working-tree

  Show changes between the current working tree and the HEAD commit. With a prefix argument show changes between the working tree and a commit read from the minibuffer.

• Key: d s, magit-diff-staged

  Show changes between the index and the HEAD commit. With a prefix argument show changes between the index and a commit read from the minibuffer.

• Key: d u, magit-diff-unstaged

  Show changes between the working tree and the index.

• Key: d p, magit-diff-paths

  Show changes between any two files on disk.

All of the above suffix commands update the repository’s diff buffer. The diff popup also features two commands which show differences in another buffer:

• Key: d c, magit-show-commit

  Show the commit at point. If there is no commit at point or with a prefix argument, prompt for a commit.

• Key: d t, magit-stash-show

  Show all diffs of a stash in a buffer.

Two additional commands that show the diff for the file or blob that is being visited in the current buffer exists, see <a href=”*Minor Mode for Buffers Visiting Files”>*Minor Mode for Buffers Visiting Files.

Refreshing Diffs

The prefix command magit-diff-refresh-popup, on D, can be used to change the diff arguments used in the current buffer, without changing which diff is shown. This works in dedicated diff buffers, but also in the status buffer.

• Key: D, magit-diff-refresh-popup

  This prefix command shows the following suffix commands along with the appropriate infix arguments in a popup buffer.

• Key: D g, magit-diff-refresh

  This suffix command sets the local diff arguments for the current buffer.

• Key: D s, magit-diff-set-default-arguments

  This suffix command sets the default diff arguments for buffers of the same type as that of the current buffer. Other existing buffers of the same type are not affected because their local values have already been initialized.

• Key: D w, magit-diff-save-default-arguments

  This suffix command sets the default diff arguments for buffers of the same type as that of the current buffer, and saves the value for future sessions. Other existing buffers of the same type are not affected because their local values have already been initialized.

• Key: D t, magit-diff-toggle-refine-hunk

  This command toggles hunk refinement on or off.

• Key: D r, magit-diff-switch-range-type

  This command converts the diff range type from “revA..revB” to “revB…revA”, or vice versa.

• Key: D f, magit-diff-flip-revs

  This command swaps revisions in the diff range from “revA..revB” to “revB..revA”, or vice versa.

• Key: D F, magit-diff-toggle-file-filter

  This command toggles the file restriction of the diffs in the current buffer, allowing you to quickly switch between viewing all the changes in the commit and the restricted subset. As a special case, when this command is called from a log buffer, it toggles the file restriction in the repository’s revision buffer, which is useful when you display a revision from a log buffer that is restricted to a file or files.

In addition to the above popup, which allows changing any of the supported arguments, there also exist some commands which change a particular argument.

• Key: -, magit-diff-less-context

  This command decreases the context for diff hunks by COUNT lines.

• Key: +, magit-diff-more-context

  This command increases the context for diff hunks by COUNT lines.

• Key: 0, magit-diff-default-context

  This command resets the context for diff hunks to the default height.

The following commands quickly change what diff is being displayed without having to using one of the diff popups.

• Key: C-c C-d, magit-diff-while-committing

  While committing, this command shows the changes that are about to be committed. While amending, invoking the command again toggles between showing just the new changes or all the changes that will be committed.

  This binding is available in the diff buffer as well as the commit message buffer.

• Key: C-c C-b, magit-go-backward

  This command moves backward in current buffer’s history.

• Key: C-c C-f, magit-go-forward

  This command moves forward in current buffer’s history.

Diff Buffer

These commands are available in diff buffers.

• Key: RET, magit-diff-visit-file

  From a diff, visit the corresponding file at the appropriate position.

  If the diff shows changes in the worktree, the index, or HEAD, then visit the actual file. Otherwise, when the diff is about an older commit or a range, then visit the appropriate blob.

  If point is on a removed line, then visit the blob for the first parent of the commit which removed that line, i.e. the last commit where that line still existed. Otherwise visit the blob for the commit whose changes are being shown.

  Interactively, when the file or blob to be displayed is already being displayed in another window of the same frame, then just select that window and adjust point. Otherwise, or with a prefix argument, display the buffer in another window. The meaning of the prefix argument can be inverted or further modified using the option magit-display-file-buffer-function.

  Non-interactively the optional OTHER-WINDOW argument is taken literally. DISPLAY-FN can be used to specify the display function explicitly, in which case OTHER-WINDOW is ignored.

  The optional FORCE-WORKTREE means to force visiting the worktree version of the file. To do this interactively use the command magit-diff-visit-file-worktree instead.

• User Option: magit-diff-visit-previous-blob

  This option controls whether magit-diff-visit-file may visit the previous blob. When this is t and point is on a removed line in a diff for a committed change, then magit-diff-visit-file visits the blob from the last revision which still had that line.

  Currently this is only supported for committed changes, for staged and unstaged changes magit-diff-visit-file always visits the file in the working tree.

• Key: C-<return>, magit-diff-visit-file-worktree

  From a diff, visit the corresponding file at the appropriate position.

  When the file is already being displayed in another window of the same frame, then just select that window and adjust point. With a prefix argument also display in another window.

  The actual file in the worktree is visited. The positions in the hunk headers get less useful the “older” the changes are, and as a result, jumping to the appropriate position gets less reliable.

  Also see magit-diff-visit-file, which visits the respective blob, unless the diff shows changes in the worktree, the index, or HEAD.

• Command: magit-diff-visit-file-other-window

  From a diff, visit the corresponding file at the appropriate position in another window.

• Key: C-c C-t, magit-diff-trace-definition

  From a diff, show log for the definition at point.

• Key: C-c C-e, magit-diff-edit-hunk-commit

  From a hunk, edit the respective commit and visit the file.

  First visit the file being modified by the hunk at the correct location using magit-diff-visit-file. This actually visits a blob. When point is on a diff header, not within an individual hunk, then this visits the blob the first hunk is about.

  Then invoke magit-edit-line-commit, which uses an interactive rebase to make the commit editable, or if that is not possible because the commit is not reachable from HEAD by checking out that commit directly. This also causes the actual worktree file to be visited.

  Neither the blob nor the file buffer are killed when finishing the rebase. If that is undesirable, then it might be better to use magit-rebase-edit-command instead of this command.

• Key: j, magit-jump-to-diffstat-or-diff

  Jump to the diffstat or diff. When point is on a file inside the diffstat section, then jump to the respective diff section. Otherwise, jump to the diffstat section or a child thereof.

• Key: SPC, scroll-up

  Scroll text upward.

• Key: DEL, scroll-down

  Scroll text downward.

Diff Options

• User Option: magit-diff-refine-hunk

  Whether to show word-granularity differences within diff hunks.

  • nil never show fine differences.
  • t show fine differences for the current diff hunk only.
  • all show fine differences for all displayed diff hunks.
• User Option: magit-diff-adjust-tab-width

  Whether to adjust the width of tabs in diffs.

  Determining the correct width can be expensive if it requires opening large and/or many files, so the widths are cached in the variable magit-diff--tab-width-cache. Set that to nil to invalidate the cache.

  • nil Never ajust tab width. Use `tab-width’s value from the Magit buffer itself instead.
  • t If the corresponding file-visiting buffer exits, then use tab-width’s value from that buffer. Doing this is cheap, so this value is used even if a corresponding cache entry exists.
  • always If there is no such buffer, then temporarily visit the file to determine the value.
  • NUMBER Like always, but don’t visit files larger than NUMBER bytes.
• User Option: magit-diff-paint-whitespace

  Specify where to highlight whitespace errors.

  See magit-diff-highlight-trailing, magit-diff-highlight-indentation. The symbol t means in all diffs, status means only in the status buffer, and nil means nowhere.

• User Option: magit-diff-highlight-trailing

  Whether to highlight whitespace at the end of a line in diffs. Used only when magit-diff-paint-whitespace is non-nil.

• User Option: magit-diff-highlight-indentation

  Highlight the “wrong” indentation style. Used only when magit-diff-paint-whitespace is non-nil.

  The value is a list of cons cells. The car is a regular expression, and the cdr is the value that applies to repositories whose directory matches the regular expression. If more than one element matches, then the last element in the list applies. The default value should therefore come first in the list.

  If the value is tabs, highlight indentation with tabs. If the value is an integer, highlight indentation with at least that many spaces. Otherwise, highlight neither.

• User Option: magit-diff-hide-trailing-cr-characters

  Whether to hide ^M characters at the end of a line in diffs.

• User Option: magit-diff-highlight-hunk-region-functions

  This option specifies the functions used to highlight the hunk-internal region.

  magit-diff-highlight-hunk-region-dim-outside overlays the outside of the hunk internal selection with a face that causes the added and removed lines to have the same background color as context lines. This function should not be removed from the value of this option.

  magit-diff-highlight-hunk-region-using-overlays and magit-diff-highlight-hunk-region-using-underline emphasize the region by placing delimiting horizontal lines before and after it. Both of these functions have glitches which cannot be fixed due to limitations of Emacs’ display engine. For more information see https://github.com/magit/magit/issues/2758 ff.

  Instead of, or in addition to, using delimiting horizontal lines, to emphasize the boundaries, you may which to emphasize the text itself, using magit-diff-highlight-hunk-region-using-face.

  In terminal frames it’s not possible to draw lines as the overlay and underline variants normally do, so there they fall back to calling the face function instead.

• User Option: magit-diff-unmarked-lines-keep-foreground

  This option controls whether added and removed lines outside the hunk-internal region only lose their distinct background color or also the foreground color. Whether the outside of the region is dimmed at all depends on magit-diff-highlight-hunk-region-functions.

Revision Buffer

• User Option: magit-revision-insert-related-refs

  Whether to show related refs in revision buffers.

• User Option: magit-revision-show-gravatar

  Whether to show gravatar images in revision buffers.

  If non-nil, then the value has to be a cons-cell which specifies where the gravatar images for the author and/or the committer are inserted inside the text that was previously inserted according to magit-revision-header-format.

  Both cells are regular expressions. The car specifies where to insert the author gravatar image. The top half of the image is inserted right after the matched text, the bottom half on the next line at the same offset. The cdr specifies where to insert the committer image, accordingly. Either the car or the cdr may be nil.

• User Option: magit-revision-use-hash-sections

  Whether to turn hashes inside the commit message into sections.

  If non-nil, then hashes inside the commit message are turned into commit sections. There is a trade off to be made between performance and reliability:

  • slow calls git for every word to be absolutely sure.
  • quick skips words less than seven characters long.
  • quicker additionally skips words that don’t contain a number.
  • quickest uses all words that are at least seven characters long and which contain at least one number as well as at least one letter.

  If nil, then no hashes are turned into sections, but you can still visit the commit at point using “RET”.

The diffs shown in the revision buffer may be automatically restricted to a subset of the changed files. If the revision buffer is displayed from a log buffer, the revision buffer will share the same file restriction as that log buffer (also see the command magit-diff-toggle-file-filter). Note, however, that the log’s file restriction will be ignored when magit-log-arguments includes --follow. In this case, the -u argument of the log popup can be used to show the file-restricted diffs inline.

If the revision buffer is not displayed from a log buffer, the file restriction is determined by the file restriction in the repository’s diff buffer, if it exists, and the value of the option magit-use-sticky-arguments.

Ediffing

This section describes how to enter Ediff from Magit buffers. For information on how to use Ediff itself, see info:ediff.

• Key: e, magit-ediff-dwim

  Compare, stage, or resolve using Ediff.

  This command tries to guess what file, and what commit or range the user wants to compare, stage, or resolve using Ediff. It might only be able to guess either the file, or range/commit, in which case the user is asked about the other. It might not always guess right, in which case the appropriate magit-ediff-* command has to be used explicitly. If it cannot read the user’s mind at all, then it asks the user for a command to run.

• Key: E, magit-ediff-popup

  This prefix command shows the following suffix commands in a popup buffer.

• Key: E r, magit-ediff-compare

  Compare two revisions of a file using Ediff.

  If the region is active, use the revisions on the first and last line of the region. With a prefix argument, instead of diffing the revisions, choose a revision to view changes along, starting at the common ancestor of both revisions (i.e., use a “…” range).

• Key: E m, magit-ediff-resolve

  Resolve outstanding conflicts in a file using Ediff, defaulting to the file at point.

  Provided that the value of merge.conflictstyle is diff3, you can view the file’s merge-base revision using / in the Ediff control buffer.

  In the rare event that you want to manually resolve all conflicts, including those already resolved by Git, use ediff-merge-revisions-with-ancestor.

• Key: E s, magit-ediff-stage

  Stage and unstage changes to a file using Ediff, defaulting to the file at point.

• Key: E u, magit-ediff-show-unstaged

  Show unstaged changes to a file using Ediff.

• Key: E i, magit-ediff-show-staged

  Show staged changes to a file using Ediff.

• Key: E w, magit-ediff-show-working-tree

  Show changes in a file between HEAD and working tree using Ediff.

• Key: E c, magit-ediff-show-commit

  Show changes to a file introduced by a commit using Ediff.

• Key: E z, magit-ediff-show-stash

  Show changes to a file introduced by a stash using Ediff.

• User Option: magit-ediff-dwim-show-on-hunks

  This option controls what command magit-ediff-dwim calls when point is on uncommitted hunks. When nil, always run magit-ediff-stage. Otherwise, use magit-ediff-show-staged and magit-ediff-show-unstaged to show staged and unstaged changes, respectively.

• User Option: magit-ediff-show-stash-with-index

  This option controls whether magit-ediff-show-stash includes a buffer containing the file’s state in the index at the time the stash was created. This makes it possible to tell which changes in the stash were staged.

• User Option: magit-ediff-quit-hook

  This hook is run after quitting an Ediff session that was created using a Magit command. The hook functions are run inside the Ediff control buffer, and should not change the current buffer.

  This is similar to ediff-quit-hook but takes the needs of Magit into account. The regular ediff-quit-hook is ignored by Ediff sessions that were created using a Magit command.

References Buffer

_

• Key: y, magit-show-refs-popup

  List and compare references in a dedicated buffer. By default all refs are compared with HEAD, but with a prefix argument this command instead acts as a prefix command and shows the following suffix commands along with the appropriate infix arguments in a popup buffer.

• Key: y y, magit-show-refs-head

  List and compare references in a dedicated buffer. Refs are compared with HEAD.

• Key: y c, magit-show-refs-current

  List and compare references in a dedicated buffer. Refs are compared with the current branch or HEAD if it is detached.

• Key: y o, magit-show-refs

  List and compare references in a dedicated buffer. Refs are compared with a branch read from the user.

• User Option: magit-refs-show-commit-count

  Whether to show commit counts in Magit-Refs mode buffers.

  • all Show counts for branches and tags.
  • branch Show counts for branches only.
  • nil Never show counts.

  The default is nil because anything else can be very expensive.

• User Option: magit-refs-pad-commit-counts

  Whether to pad all commit counts on all sides in Magit-Refs mode buffers.

  If this is nil, then some commit counts are displayed right next to one of the branches that appear next to the count, without any space in between. This might look bad if the branch name faces look too similar to magit-dimmed.

  If this is non-nil, then spaces are placed on both sides of all commit counts.

• User Option: magit-refs-show-remote-prefix

  Whether to show the remote prefix in lists of remote branches.

  Showing the prefix is redundant because the name of the remote is already shown in the heading preceeding the list of its branches.

• User Option: magit-refs-primary-column-width

  Width of the primary column in `magit-refs-mode’ buffers. The primary column is the column that contains the name of the branch that the current row is about.

  If this is an integer, then the column is that many columns wide. Otherwise it has to be a cons-cell of two integers. The first specifies the minimal width, the second the maximal width. In that case the actual width is determined using the length of the names of the shown local branches. (Remote branches and tags are not taken into account when calculating to optimal width.)

• User Option: magit-refs-focus-column-width

  Width of the focus column in `magit-refs-mode’ buffers.

  The focus column is the first column, which marks one branch (usually the current branch) as the focused branch using * or @. For each other reference, this column optionally shows how many commits it is ahead of the focused branch and <, or if it isn’t ahead then the commits it is behind and >, or if it isn’t behind either, then a =.

  This column may also display only * or @ for the focused branch, in which case this option is ignored. Use L v to change the verbosity of this column.

• User Option: magit-refs-margin

  This option specifies whether the margin is initially shown in Magit-Refs mode buffers and how it is formatted.

  The value has the form (INIT STYLE WIDTH AUTHOR AUTHOR-WIDTH).

  • If INIT is non-nil, then the margin is shown initially.
  • STYLE controls how to format the committer date. It can be one of age (to show the age of the commit), age-abbreviated (to abbreviate the time unit to a character), or a string (suitable for format-time-string) to show the actual date.
  • WIDTH controls the width of the margin. This exists for forward compatibility and currently the value should not be changed.
  • AUTHOR controls whether the name of the author is also shown by default.
  • AUTHOR-WIDTH has to be an integer. When the name of the author is shown, then this specifies how much space is used to do so.
• User Option: magit-refs-margin-for-tags

  This option specifies whether to show information about tags in the margin. This is disabled by default because it is slow if there are many tags.

The following variables control how individual refs are displayed. If you change one of these variables (especially the “%c” part), then you should also change the others to keep things aligned. The following %-sequences are supported:

• %a Number of commits this ref has over the one we compare to.
• %b Number of commits the ref we compare to has over this one.
• %c Number of commits this ref has over the one we compare to. For the ref which all other refs are compared this is instead “@”, if it is the current branch, or “#” otherwise.
• %C For the ref which all other refs are compared this is “@”, if it is the current branch, or “#” otherwise. For all other refs ” “.
• %h Hash of this ref’s tip.
• %m Commit summary of the tip of this ref.
• %n Name of this ref.
• %u Upstream of this local branch.
• %U Upstream of this local branch and additional local vs. upstream information.
• User Option: magit-refs-filter-alist

  This alist controls which tags and branches are omitted from being displayed in magit-refs-mode buffers. If it is nil, then all refs are displayed (subject to magit-refs-sections-hook).

  All keys are tried in order until one matches. Then its value is used and subsequent elements are ignored. If the value is non-nil, then the reference is displayed, otherwise it is not. If no element matches, then the reference is displayed.

  A key can either be a regular expression that the refname has to match, or a function that takes the refname as only argument and returns a boolean. Contrary to how they are displayed in the buffer, for comparison each tag begins with “tags/” and each remote branch with “<remote>/”.

• Key: RET, magit-visit-ref

  This command visits the reference or revision at point in another buffer. If there is no revision at point or with a prefix argument then it prompts for a revision.

  This command behaves just like magit-show-commit as described above, except if point is on a reference in a magit-refs-mode buffer, in which case the behavior may be different, but only if you have customized the option magit-visit-ref-behavior.

• User Option: magit-visit-ref-behavior

  This option controls how magit-visit-ref behaves in magit-refs-mode buffers.

  By default magit-visit-ref behaves like magit-show-commit, in all buffers, including magit-refs-mode buffers. When the type of the section at point is commit then “RET” is bound to magit-show-commit, and when the type is either branch or tag then it is bound to magit-visit-ref.

  “RET” is one of Magit’s most essential keys and at least by default it should behave consistently across all of Magit, especially because users quickly learn that it does something very harmless; it shows more information about the thing at point in another buffer.

  However “RET” used to behave differently in magit-refs-mode buffers, doing surprising things, some of which cannot really be described as “visit this thing”. If you’ve grown accustomed this behavior, you can restore it by adding one or more of the below symbols to the value of this option. But keep in mind that by doing so you don’t only introduce inconsistencies, you also lose some functionality and might have to resort to M-x magit-show-commit to get it back.

  magit-visit-ref looks for these symbols in the order in which they are described here. If the presence of a symbol applies to the current situation, then the symbols that follow do not affect the outcome.

  • focus-on-ref

    With a prefix argument update the buffer to show commit counts and lists of cherry commits relative to the reference at point instead of relative to the current buffer or HEAD.

    Instead of adding this symbol, consider pressing “C-u y o RET”.

  • create-branch

    If point is on a remote branch, then create a new local branch with the same name, use the remote branch as its upstream, and then check out the local branch.

    Instead of adding this symbol, consider pressing “b c RET RET”, like you would do in other buffers.

  • checkout-any

    Check out the reference at point. If that reference is a tag or a remote branch, then this results in a detached HEAD.

    Instead of adding this symbol, consider pressing “b b RET”, like you would do in other buffers.

  • checkout-branch

    Check out the local branch at point.

    Instead of adding this symbol, consider pressing “b b RET”, like you would do in other buffers.

References Sections

The contents of references buffers is controlled using the hook magit-refs-sections-hook. See *Section Hooks to learn about such hooks and how to customize them. All of the below functions are members of the default value. Note that it makes much less sense to customize this hook than it does for the respective hook used for the status buffer.

• User Option: magit-refs-sections-hook

  Hook run to insert sections into a references buffer.

• Function: magit-insert-local-branches

  Insert sections showing all local branches.

• Function: magit-insert-remote-branches

  Insert sections showing all remote-tracking branches.

• Function: magit-insert-tags

  Insert sections showing all tags.

Bisecting

Also see man:git-bisect

• Key: B, magit-bisect-popup

  This prefix command shows the following suffix commands in a popup buffer.

When bisecting is not in progress, then the popup buffer features the following commands.

• Key: B B, magit-bisect-start

  Start a bisect session.

  Bisecting a bug means to find the commit that introduced it. This command starts such a bisect session by asking for a known good and a bad commit.

• Key: B s, magit-bisect-run

  Bisect automatically by running commands after each step.

When bisecting is in progress, then the popup buffer features these commands instead.

• Key: B b, magit-bisect-bad

  Mark the current commit as bad. Use this after you have asserted that the commit does contain the bug in question.

• Key: B g, magit-bisect-good

  Mark the current commit as good. Use this after you have asserted that the commit does not contain the bug in question.

• Key: B k, magit-bisect-skip

  Skip the current commit. Use this if for some reason the current commit is not a good one to test. This command lets Git choose a different one.

• Key: B r, magit-bisect-reset

  After bisecting, cleanup bisection state and return to original HEAD.

By default the status buffer shows information about the ongoing bisect session.

• User Option: magit-bisect-show-graph

  This option controls whether a graph is displayed for the log of commits that still have to be bisected.

Visiting Blobs

• Key: M-x magit-find-file, magit-find-file

  View FILE from REV. Switch to a buffer visiting blob REV:FILE, creating one if none already exists.

• Key: M-x magit-find-file-other-window, magit-find-file-other-window

  View FILE from REV, in another window. Like magit-find-file, but create a new window or reuse an existing one.

Blaming

Also see man:git-blame

To start blaming you can use M-x in a file-visiting buffer to invoke one of the following commands. You can also invoke these commands using the blame popup, which is available on b in file-visiting buffers that already contain blame information and, also on b, in all blob-visiting buffers. You can also enter the blame popup from the file popup, which is available on C-c M-g, provided magit-file-mode is enabled, see *Minor Mode for Buffers Visiting Files.

• Command: magit-blame

  This command augments each line or chunk of lines in the current file- or blob-visiting buffer with information about what commits last touched these lines.

  If the buffer visits a revision of that file, then history up to that revision is considered. Otherwise, the file’s full history is considered, including uncommitted changes.

  If Magit-Blame mode is already turned on in the current buffer then blaming is done recursively, by visiting REVISION:FILE (using magit-find-file), where REVISION is a parent of the revision that added the current line or chunk of lines.

• Command: magit-blame-echo

  This command is like magit-blame except that it doesn’t turn on read-only-mode and that it initially uses the visualization style specified by option magit-blame-echo-style.

• Command: magit-blame-removal

  This command augments each line or chunk of lines in the current blob-visiting buffer with information about the revision that removes it. It cannot be used in file-visiting buffers.

  Like magit-blame, this command can be used recursively.

• Command: magit-blame-reverse

  This command augments each line or chunk of lines in the current file- or blob-visiting buffer with information about the last revision in which a line still existed.

  Like magit-blame, this command can be used recursively.

The following key bindings are available when Magit-Blame mode is enabled and Read-Only mode is not enabled. These commands are also available in other buffers; here only the behavior is described that is relevant in file-visiting buffers that are being blamed.

• Key: RET, magit-show-commit

  This command shows the commit that last touched the line at point.

• Key: SPC, magit-diff-show-or-scroll-up

  This command updates the commit buffer.

  This either shows the commit that last touched the line at point in the appropriate buffer, or if that buffer is already being displayed in the current frame and if that buffer contains information about that commit, then the buffer is scrolled up instead.

• Key: DEL, magit-diff-show-or-scroll-down

  This command updates the commit buffer.

  This either shows the commit that last touched the line at point in the appropriate buffer, or if that buffer is already being displayed in the current frame and if that buffer contains information about that commit, then the buffer is scrolled down instead.

The following key bindings are available when Magit-Blame mode is enabled and Read-Only mode is not enabled.

• Key: b, magit-blame-popup

  This prefix command shows the above suffix command along with the appropriate infix arguments in a popup buffer.

• Key: n, magit-blame-next-chunk

  This command moves to the next chunk.

• Key: N, magit-blame-next-chunk-same-commit

  This command moves to the next chunk from the same commit.

• Key: p, magit-blame-previous-chunk

  This command moves to the previous chunk.

• Key: P, magit-blame-previous-chunk-same-commit

  This command moves to the previous chunk from the same commit.

• Key: q, magit-blame-quit

  This command turns off Magit-Blame mode. If the buffer was created during a recursive blame, then it also kills the buffer.

• Key: M-w, magit-blame-copy-hash

  This command saves the hash of the current chunk’s commit to the kill ring.

  When the region is active, the command saves the region’s content instead of the hash, like kill-ring-save would.

• Key: c, magit-blame-cycle-style

  This command changes how blame information is visualized in the current buffer by cycling through the styles specified using the option magit-blame-styles.

Blaming is also controlled using the following options.

• User Option: magit-blame-styles

  This option defines a list of styles used to visualize blame information. For now see its doc-string to learn more.

• User Option: magit-blame-echo-style

  This option specifies the blame visualization style used by the command magit-blame-echo. This must be a symbol that is used as the identifier for one of the styles defined in magit-blame-styles.

• User Option: magit-blame-time-format

  This option specifies the format string used to display times when showing blame information.

• User Option: magit-blame-read-only

  This option controls whether blaming a buffer also makes temporarily read-only.

• User Option: magit-blame-disable-modes

  This option lists incompatible minor-modes that should be disabled temporarily when a buffer contains blame information. They are enabled again when the buffer no longer shows blame information.

• User Option: magit-blame-goto-chunk-hook

  This hook is run when moving between chunks.

Manipulating

Repository Setup

• Key: M-x magit-init, magit-init

  This command initializes a repository and then shows the status buffer for the new repository.

  If the directory is below an existing repository, then the user has to confirm that a new one should be created inside. If the directory is the root of the existing repository, then the user has to confirm that it should be reinitialized.

• Key: M-x magit-clone, magit-clone

  This command clones a repository and then shows the status buffer for the new repository.

  The user is queried for a remote url and a local directory.

• User Option: magit-clone-set-remote.pushDefault

  Whether to set the value of remote.pushDefault after cloning.

  If t, then set without asking. If nil, then don’t set. If ask, then ask the user every time she clones a repository.

Staging and Unstaging

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Like Git, Magit can of course stage and unstage complete files. Unlike Git, it also allows users to gracefully un-/stage individual hunks and even just part of a hunk. To stage individual hunks and parts of hunks using Git directly, one has to use the very modal and rather clumsy interface of a git add --interactive session.

With Magit, on the other hand, one can un-/stage individual hunks by just moving point into the respective section inside a diff displayed in the status buffer or a separate diff buffer and typing s or u. To operate on just parts of a hunk, mark the changes that should be un-/staged using the region and then press the same key that would be used to un-/stage. To stage multiple files or hunks at once use a region that starts inside the heading of such a section and ends inside the heading of a sibling section of the same type.

Besides staging and unstaging, Magit also provides several other “apply variants” that can also operate on a file, multiple files at once, a hunk, multiple hunks at once, and on parts of a hunk. These apply variants are described in the next section.

You can also use Ediff to stage and unstage. See *Ediffing.

• Key: s, magit-stage

  Add the change at point to the staging area.

  With a prefix argument and an untracked file (or files) at point, stage the file but not its content. This makes it possible to stage only a subset of the new file’s changes.

• Key: S, magit-stage-modified

  Stage all changes to files modified in the worktree. Stage all new content of tracked files and remove tracked files that no longer exist in the working tree from the index also. With a prefix argument also stage previously untracked (but not ignored) files.

• Key: u, magit-unstage

  Remove the change at point from the staging area.

  Only staged changes can be unstaged. But by default this command performs an action that is somewhat similar to unstaging, when it is called on a committed change: it reverses the change in the index but not in the working tree.

• Key: U, magit-unstage-all

  Remove all changes from the staging area.

• User Option: magit-unstage-committed

  This option controls whether magit-unstage “unstages” committed changes by reversing them in the index but not the working tree. The alternative is to raise an error.

• Key: M-x magit-reverse-in-index, magit-reverse-in-index

  This command reverses the committed change at point in the index but not the working tree. By default no key is bound directly to this command, but it is indirectly called when u (magit-unstage) is pressed on a committed change.

  This allows extracting a change from HEAD, while leaving it in the working tree, so that it can later be committed using a separate commit. A typical workflow would be:

  1. Optionally make sure that there are no uncommitted changes.
  2. Visit the HEAD commit and navigate to the change that should not have been included in that commit.
  3. Type u (magit-unstage) to reverse it in the index. This assumes that magit-unstage-committed-changes is non-nil.
  4. Type c e to extend HEAD with the staged changes, including those that were already staged before.
  5. Optionally stage the remaining changes using s or S and then type c c to create a new commit.
• Key: M-x magit-reset-index, magit-reset-index

  Reset the index to some commit. The commit is read from the user and defaults to the commit at point. If there is no commit at point, then it defaults to HEAD.

Staging from File-Visiting Buffers

Fine-grained un-/staging has to be done from the status or a diff buffer, but it’s also possible to un-/stage all changes made to the file visited in the current buffer right from inside that buffer.

• Key: M-x magit-stage-file, magit-stage-file

  When invoked inside a file-visiting buffer, then stage all changes to that file. In a Magit buffer, stage the file at point if any. Otherwise prompt for a file to be staged. With a prefix argument always prompt the user for a file, even in a file-visiting buffer or when there is a file section at point.

• Key: M-x magit-unstage-file, magit-unstage-file

  When invoked inside a file-visiting buffer, then unstage all changes to that file. In a Magit buffer, unstage the file at point if any. Otherwise prompt for a file to be unstaged. With a prefix argument always prompt the user for a file, even in a file-visiting buffer or when there is a file section at point.

Applying

Magit provides several “apply variants”: stage, unstage, discard, reverse, and “regular apply”. At least when operating on a hunk they are all implemented using git apply, which is why they are called “apply variants”.

• Stage. Apply a change from the working tree to the index. The change also remains in the working tree.
• Unstage. Remove a change from the index. The change remains in the working tree.
• Discard. On a staged change, remove it from the working tree and the index. On an unstaged change, remove it from the working tree only.
• Reverse. Reverse a change in the working tree. Both committed and staged changes can be reversed. Unstaged changes cannot be reversed. Discard them instead.
• Apply. Apply a change to the working tree. Both committed and staged changes can be applied. Unstaged changes cannot be applied - as they already have been applied.

The previous section described the staging and unstaging commands. What follows are the commands which implement the remaining apply variants.

• Key: a, magit-apply

  Apply the change at point to the working tree.

  With a prefix argument fallback to a 3-way merge. Doing so causes the change to be applied to the index as well.

• Key: k, magit-discard

  Remove the change at point from the working tree.

• Key: v, magit-reverse

  Reverse the change at point in the working tree.

  With a prefix argument fallback to a 3-way merge. Doing so causes the change to be applied to the index as well.

With a prefix argument all apply variants attempt a 3-way merge when appropriate (i.e. when git apply is used internally).

Committing

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When the user initiates a commit, Magit calls git commit without any arguments, so Git has to get it from the user. It creates the file .git/COMMIT_EDITMSG and then opens that file in an editor. Magit arranges for that editor to be the Emacsclient. Once the user finishes the editing session, the Emacsclient exits and Git creates the commit using the file’s content as message.

Initiating a Commit

Also see man:git-commit

• Key: c, magit-commit-popup

  This prefix command shows the following suffix commands along with the appropriate infix arguments in a popup buffer.

• Key: c c, magit-commit

  Create a new commit on HEAD. With a prefix argument amend to the commit at HEAD instead.

• Key: c a, magit-commit-amend

  Amend the last commit.

• Key: c e, magit-commit-extend

  Amend the last commit, without editing the message. With a prefix argument keep the committer date, otherwise change it. The option magit-commit-extend-override-date can be used to inverse the meaning of the prefix argument.

  Non-interactively respect the optional OVERRIDE-DATE argument and ignore the option.

• Key: c w, magit-commit-reword

  Reword the last commit, ignoring staged changes. With a prefix argument keep the committer date, otherwise change it. The option magit-commit-reword-override-date can be used to inverse the meaning of the prefix argument.

  Non-interactively respect the optional OVERRIDE-DATE argument and ignore the option.

• Key: c f, magit-commit-fixup

  Create a fixup commit.

  With a prefix argument the target commit has to be confirmed. Otherwise the commit at point may be used without confirmation depending on the value of option magit-commit-squash-confirm.

• Key: c F, magit-commit-instant-fixup

  Create a fixup commit and instantly rebase.

• Key: c s, magit-commit-squash

  Create a squash commit, without editing the squash message.

  With a prefix argument the target commit has to be confirmed. Otherwise the commit at point may be used without confirmation depending on the value of option magit-commit-squash-confirm.

• Key: c S, magit-commit-instant-squash

  Create a squash commit and instantly rebase.

• Key: c A, magit-commit-augment

  Create a squash commit, editing the squash message.

  With a prefix argument the target commit has to be confirmed. Otherwise the commit at point may be used without confirmation depending on the value of option magit-commit-squash-confirm.

• User Option: magit-commit-ask-to-stage

  Whether to ask to stage all unstaged changes when committing and nothing is staged.

• User Option: magit-commit-extend-override-date

  Whether using magit-commit-extend changes the committer date.

• User Option: magit-commit-reword-override-date

  Whether using magit-commit-reword changes the committer date.

• User Option: magit-commit-squash-confirm

  Whether the commit targeted by squash and fixup has to be confirmed. When non-nil then the commit at point (if any) is used as default choice. Otherwise it has to be confirmed. This option only affects magit-commit-squash and magit-commit-fixup. The “instant” variants always require confirmation because making an error while using those is harder to recover from.

Editing Commit Messages

After initiating a commit as described in the previous section, two new buffers appear. One shows the changes that are about to committed, while the other is used to write the message. All regular editing commands are available in the commit message buffer. This section only describes the additional commands.

Commit messages are edited in an edit session - in the background Git is waiting for the editor, in our case the Emacsclient, to save the commit message in a file (in most cases .git/COMMIT_EDITMSG) and then return. If the Emacsclient returns with a non-zero exit status then Git does not create the commit. So the most important commands are those for finishing and aborting the commit.

• Key: C-c C-c, with-editor-finish

  Finish the current editing session by returning with exit code 0. Git then creates the commit using the message it finds in the file.

• Key: C-c C-k, with-editor-cancel

  Cancel the current editing session by returning with exit code 1. Git then cancels the commit, but leaves the file untouched.

In addition to being used by Git, these messages may also be stored in a ring that persists until Emacs is closed. By default the message is stored at the beginning and the end of an edit session (regardless of whether the session is finished successfully or was canceled). It is sometimes useful to bring back messages from that ring.

• Key: C-c M-s, git-commit-save-message

  Save the current buffer content to the commit message ring.

• Key: M-p, git-commit-prev-message

  Cycle backward through the commit message ring, after saving the current message to the ring. With a numeric prefix ARG, go back ARG comments.

• Key: M-n, git-commit-next-message

  Cycle forward through the commit message ring, after saving the current message to the ring. With a numeric prefix ARG, go back ARG comments.

By default the diff for the changes that are about to be committed are automatically shown when invoking the commit. When amending to an existing commit it may be useful to show either the changes that are about to be added to that commit or to show those changes together with those that are already committed.

• Key: C-c C-d, magit-diff-while-committing

  While committing, show the changes that are about to be committed. While amending, invoking the command again toggles between showing just the new changes or all the changes that will be committed.

• Key: C-c C-w, magit-pop-revision-stack

  This command inserts a representation of a revision into the current buffer. It can be used inside buffers used to write commit messages but also in other buffers such as buffers used to edit emails or ChangeLog files.

  By default this command pops the revision which was last added to the magit-revision-stack and inserts it into the current buffer according to magit-pop-revision-stack-format. Revisions can be put on the stack using magit-copy-section-value and magit-copy-buffer-revision.

  If the stack is empty or with a prefix argument it instead reads a revision in the minibuffer. By using the minibuffer history this allows selecting an item which was popped earlier or to insert an arbitrary reference or revision without first pushing it onto the stack.

  When reading the revision from the minibuffer, then it might not be possible to guess the correct repository. When this command is called inside a repository (e.g. while composing a commit message), then that repository is used. Otherwise (e.g. while composing an email) then the repository recorded for the top element of the stack is used (even though we insert another revision). If not called inside a repository and with an empty stack, or with two prefix arguments, then read the repository in the minibuffer too.

• User Option: magit-pop-revision-stack-format

  This option controls how the command magit-pop-revision-stack inserts a revision into the current buffer.

  The entries on the stack have the format (HASH TOPLEVEL) and this option has the format (POINT-FORMAT EOB-FORMAT INDEX-REGEXP), all of which may be nil or a string (though either one of EOB-FORMAT or POINT-FORMAT should be a string, and if INDEX-REGEXP is non-nil, then the two formats should be too).

  First INDEX-REGEXP is used to find the previously inserted entry, by searching backward from point. The first submatch must match the index number. That number is incremented by one, and becomes the index number of the entry to be inserted. If you don’t want to number the inserted revisions, then use nil for INDEX-REGEXP.

  If INDEX-REGEXP is non-nil then both POINT-FORMAT and EOB-FORMAT should contain "%N", which is replaced with the number that was determined in the previous step.

  Both formats, if non-nil and after removing %N, are then expanded using `git show –format=FORMAT …’ inside TOPLEVEL.

  The expansion of POINT-FORMAT is inserted at point, and the expansion of EOB-FORMAT is inserted at the end of the buffer (if the buffer ends with a comment, then it is inserted right before that).

Some projects use pseudo headers in commit messages. Magit colorizes such headers and provides some commands to insert such headers.

• User Option: git-commit-known-pseudo-headers

  A list of Git pseudo headers to be highlighted.

• Key: C-c C-a, git-commit-ack

  Insert a header acknowledging that you have looked at the commit.

• Key: C-c C-r, git-commit-review

  Insert a header acknowledging that you have reviewed the commit.

• Key: C-c C-s, git-commit-signoff

  Insert a header to sign off the commit.

• Key: C-c C-t, git-commit-test

  Insert a header acknowledging that you have tested the commit.

• Key: C-c C-o, git-commit-cc

  Insert a header mentioning someone who might be interested.

• Key: C-c C-p, git-commit-reported

  Insert a header mentioning the person who reported the issue being fixed by the commit.

• Key: C-c C-i, git-commit-suggested

  Insert a header mentioning the person who suggested the change.

git-commit-mode is a minor mode that is only used to establish the above key bindings. This allows using an arbitrary major mode when editing the commit message. It’s even possible to use a different major mode in different repositories, which is useful when different projects impose different commit message conventions.

• User Option: git-commit-major-mode

  The value of this option is the major mode used to edit Git commit messages.

Because git-commit-mode is a minor mode, we don’t use its mode hook to setup the buffer, except for the key bindings. All other setup happens in the function git-commit-setup, which among other things runs the hook git-commit-setup-hook. The following functions are suitable for that hook.

• User Option: git-commit-setup-hook

  Hook run at the end of git-commit-setup.

• Function: magit-revert-buffers &optional force

  Revert unmodified file-visiting buffers of the current repository.

  If either magit-revert-buffers is non-nil and inhibit-magit-revert is nil, or if optional FORCE is non-nil, then revert all unmodified buffers that visit files being tracked in the current repository.

• Function: git-commit-save-message

  Save the current buffer content to the commit message ring.

• Function: git-commit-setup-changelog-support

  After this function is called, ChangeLog entries are treated as paragraphs.

• Function: git-commit-turn-on-auto-fill

  Turn on auto-fill-mode and set fill-column to the value of git-commit-fill-column.

• Function: git-commit-turn-on-flyspell

  Turn on Flyspell mode. Also prevent comments from being checked and finally check current non-comment text.

• Function: git-commit-propertize-diff

  Propertize the diff shown inside the commit message buffer. Git inserts such diffs into the commit message template when the --verbose argument is used. Magit’s commit popup by default does not offer that argument because the diff that is shown in a separate buffer is more useful. But some users disagree, which is why this function exists.

• Function: with-editor-usage-message

  Show usage information in the echo area.

Magit also helps with writing good commit messages by complaining when certain rules are violated.

• User Option: git-commit-summary-max-length

  The intended maximal length of the summary line of commit messages. Characters beyond this column are colorized to indicate that this preference has been violated.

• User Option: git-commit-fill-column

  Column beyond which automatic line-wrapping should happen in commit message buffers.

• User Option: git-commit-finish-query-functions

  List of functions called to query before performing commit.

  The commit message buffer is current while the functions are called. If any of them returns nil, then the commit is not performed and the buffer is not killed. The user should then fix the issue and try again.

  The functions are called with one argument. If it is non-nil then that indicates that the user used a prefix argument to force finishing the session despite issues. Functions should usually honor this wish and return non-nil.

• Function: git-commit-check-style-conventions

  Check for violations of certain basic style conventions. For each violation ask the user if she wants to proceed anyway. This makes sure the summary line isn’t too long and that the second line is empty.

To show no diff while committing remove magit-commit-diff from server-switch-hook.

Branching

The Two Remotes

The upstream branch of some local branch is the branch into which the commits on that local branch should eventually be merged, usually something like origin/master. For the master branch itself the upstream branch and the branch it is being pushed to, are usually the same remote branch. But for a feature branch the upstream branch and the branch it is being pushed to should differ.

The commits on feature branches too should eventually end up in a remote branch such as origin/master or origin/maint. Such a branch should therefore be used as the upstream. But feature branches shouldn’t be pushed directly to such branches. Instead a feature branch my-feature is usually pushed to my-fork/my-feature or if you are a contributor origin/my-feature. After the new feature has been reviewed, the maintainer merges the feature into master. And finally master (not my-feature itself) is pushed to origin/master.

But new features seldom are perfect on the first try, and so feature branches usually have to be reviewed, improved, and re-pushed several times. Pushing should therefore be easy to do, and for that reason many Git users have concluded that it is best to use the remote branch to which the local feature branch is being pushed as its upstream.

But luckily Git has long ago gained support for a push-remote which can be configured separately from the upstream branch, using the variables branch.<name>.pushRemote and remote.pushDefault. So we no longer have to choose which of the two remotes should be used as “the remote”.

Each of the fetching, pulling, and pushing popups features three commands that act on the current branch and some other branch. Of these, p is bound to a command which acts on the push-remote, u is bound to a command which acts on the upstream, and e is bound to a command which acts on any other branch. The status buffer shows unpushed and unpulled commits for both the push-remote and the upstream.

It’s fairly simple to configure these two remotes. The values of all the variables that are related to fetching, pulling, and pushing (as well as some other branch-related variables) can be inspected and changed using the popup magit-branch-config-popup, which is a sub-popup of many popups that deal with branches. It is also possible to set the push-remote or upstream while pushing (see *Pushing).

The Branch Popup

The popup magit-branch-popup is used to create and checkout branches, and to make changes to existing branches. It is not used to fetch, pull, merge, rebase, or push branches, i.e. this popup deals with branches themselves, not with the commits reachable from them. Those features are available from separate popups.

• Key: b, magit-branch-popup

  This prefix command shows the following suffix commands in a popup buffer.

  By default it also displays the values of some branch-related Git variables and allows changing their values, just like the specialized magit-branch-config-popup does.

• User Option: magit-branch-popup-show-variables

  Whether the magit-branch-popup shows Git variables. This defaults to t to avoid changing key bindings. When set to nil, no variables are displayed directly in this popup, and the sub-popup magit-branch-config-popup has to be used instead to view and change branch related variables.

• Key: b C, magit-branch-config-popup

  This command shows branch related variables in a separate popup. By default this asks the user for which branch the variables should be shown. When magit-branch-popup-show-variables is nil, then it shows the variables for the current branch, unless a prefix argument is used.

• Key: b b, magit-checkout

  Checkout a revision read in the minibuffer and defaulting to the branch or arbitrary revision at point. If the revision is a local branch then that becomes the current branch. If it is something else then HEAD becomes detached. Checkout fails if the working tree or the staging area contain changes.

• Key: b n, magit-branch

  Create a new branch. The user is asked for a branch or arbitrary revision to use as the starting point of the new branch. When a branch name is provided, then that becomes the upstream branch of the new branch. The name of the new branch is also read in the minibuffer.

  Also see option magit-branch-prefer-remote-upstream.

• Key: b c, magit-branch-and-checkout

  This command creates a new branch like magit-branch, but then also checks it out.

  Also see option magit-branch-prefer-remote-upstream.

• Key: b l, magit-branch-checkout

  This command checks out an existing or new local branch. It reads a branch name from the user offering all local branches and a subset of remote branches as candidates. Remote branches for which a local branch by the same name exists are omitted from the list of candidates. The user can also enter a completely new branch name.

  • If the user selects an existing local branch, then that is checked out.
  • If the user selects a remote branch, then it creates and checks out a new local branch with the same name, and configures the selected remote branch as the push target.
  • If the user enters a new branch name, then it creates and checks that out, after also reading the starting-point from the user.

  In the latter two cases the upstream is also set. Whether it is set to the chosen starting point or something else depends on the value of magit-branch-adjust-remote-upstream-alist.

• Key: b s, magit-branch-spinoff

  This command creates and checks out a new branch starting at and tracking the current branch. That branch in turn is reset to the last commit it shares with its upstream. If the current branch has no upstream or no unpushed commits, then the new branch is created anyway and the previously current branch is not touched.

  This is useful to create a feature branch after work has already began on the old branch (likely but not necessarily “master”).

  If the current branch is a member of the value of option magit-branch-prefer-remote-upstream (which see), then the current branch will be used as the starting point as usual, but the upstream of the starting-point may be used as the upstream of the new branch, instead of the starting-point itself.

  If optional FROM is non-nil, then the source branch is reset to FROM~, instead of to the last commit it shares with its upstream. Interactively, FROM is only ever non-nil, if the region selects some commits, and among those commits, FROM is the commit that is the fewest commits ahead of the source branch.

  The commit at the other end of the selection actually does not matter, all commits between FROM and HEAD are moved to the new branch. If FROM is not reachable from HEAD or is reachable from the source branch’s upstream, then an error is raised.

• Key: b Y, magit-branch-pull-request

  This command creates and configures a new branch from a Github pull-request, creating and configuring a new remote if necessary.

  The name of the local branch is the same as the name of the remote branch that you are being asked to merge, unless the contributor could not be bother to properly name the branch before opening the pull-request. The most likely such case is when you are being asked to merge something like “fork/master” into “origin/master”. In such cases the local branch will be named “pr-N”, where N is the pull-request number.

  These variables are always set by this command:

  • branch.<name>.pullRequest is set to the pull-request number.
  • branch.<name>.pullRequestRemote is set to the remote on which the pull-request branch is located.
  • branch.<name>.pushRemote is set to the same remote as branch.<name>.pullRequestRemote if that is possible, otherwise it is set to the upstream remote.
  • branch.<name>.description is set to the pull-request title.
  • branch.<name>.rebase is set to true because there should be no merge commits among the commits in a pull-request.

  This command also configures the upstream and the push-remote of the local branch that it creates.

  The branch against which the pull-request was opened, is always used as the upstream. This makes it easy to see what commits you are being asked to merge in the section titled something like “Unmerged into origin/master”.

  Like for other commands that create a branch it depends on the option magit-branch-prefer-remote-upstream whether the remote branch itself or the respective local branch is used as the upstream, so this section may also be titled e.g. “Unmerged into master”.

  When necessary and possible, then the remote pull-request branch is configured to be used as the push-target. This makes it easy to see what further changes the contributor has made since you last reviewed their changes in the section titled something like “Unpulled from origin/new-feature” or “Unpulled from fork/new-feature”.

  • If the pull-request branch is located in the upstream repository, then you probably have set remote.pushDefault to that repository. However some users like to set that variable to their personal fork, even if they have push access to the upstream, so branch.<name>.pushRemote is set anyway.
  • If the pull-request branch is located inside a fork, then you are usually able to push to that branch, because Github by default allows the recipient of a pull-request to push to the remote pull-request branch even if it is located in a fork. The contributor has to explicitly disable this.
    • If you are not allowed to push to the pull-request branch on the fork, then a branch by the same name located in the upstream repository is configured as the push-target.
    • A — sadly rather common — special case is when the contributor didn’t bother to use a dedicated branch for the pull-request.

      The most likely such case is when you are being asked to merge something like “fork/master” into “origin/master”. The special push permission mentioned above is never granted for the branch that is the repository’s default branch, and that would almost certainly be the case in this scenario.

      To enable you to easily push somewhere anyway, the local branch is named “pr-N” (where N is the pull-request number) and the upstream repository is used as the push-remote.

    • Finally, if you are allowed to push to the pull-request branch and the contributor had the foresight to use a dedicated branch, then the fork is configured as the push-remote.

    The push-remote is configured using branch.<name>.pushRemote, even if the used value is identical to that of remote.pushDefault, just in case you change the value of the latter later on. Additionally the variable branch.<name>.pullRequestRemote is set to the remote on which the pull-request branch is located.

  When you later delete the local pull-request branch, then you are offered to also delete the corresponding remote, provided it is not the upstream remote and that the tracking branch that corresponds to the deleted branch is the only remaining tracked branch. If you don’t confirm, then only the tracking branch itself is deleted in addition to the local branch.

  Do not delete the tracking branch instead of the local branch. The cleanup mentioned in the previous paragraph is not performed if you do that.

• Key: b y, magit-checkout-pull-request

  This command creates and configures a new branch from a pull request, the same way magit-branch-pull-request does. Additionally it checks out the new branch.

• Key: b x, magit-branch-reset

  This command resets a branch, defaulting to the branch at point, to the tip of another branch or any other commit.

  When the branch being reset is the current branch, then a hard reset is performed. If there are any uncommitted changes, then the user has to confirm the reset because those changes would be lost.

  This is useful when you have started work on a feature branch but realize it’s all crap and want to start over.

  When resetting to another branch and a prefix argument is used, then the target branch is set as the upstream of the branch that is being reset.

• Key: b k, magit-branch-delete

  Delete one or multiple branches. If the region marks multiple branches, then offer to delete those. Otherwise, prompt for a single branch to be deleted, defaulting to the branch at point.

• Key: b r, magit-branch-rename

  Rename a branch. The branch and the new name are read in the minibuffer. With prefix argument the branch is renamed even if that name conflicts with an existing branch.

• User Option: magit-branch-read-upstream-first

  When creating a branch, whether to read the upstream branch before the name of the branch that is to be created. The default is nil, and I recommend you leave it at that.

• User Option: magit-branch-prefer-remote-upstream

  This option specifies whether remote upstreams are favored over local upstreams when creating new branches.

  When a new branch is created, then the branch, commit, or stash at point is suggested as the starting point of the new branch, or if there is no such revision at point the current branch. In either case the user may choose another starting point.

  If the chosen starting point is a branch, then it may also be set as the upstream of the new branch, depending on the value of the Git variable `branch.autoSetupMerge’. By default this is done for remote branches, but not for local branches.

  You might prefer to always use some remote branch as upstream. If the chosen starting point is (1) a local branch, (2) whose name matches a member of the value of this option, (3) the upstream of that local branch is a remote branch with the same name, and (4) that remote branch can be fast-forwarded to the local branch, then the chosen branch is used as starting point, but its own upstream is used as the upstream of the new branch.

  Members of this option’s value are treated as branch names that have to match exactly unless they contain a character that makes them invalid as a branch name. Recommended characters to use to trigger interpretation as a regexp are “*” and “^”. Some other characters which you might expect to be invalid, actually are not, e.g. “.+$” are all perfectly valid. More precisely, if `git check-ref-format –branch STRING’ exits with a non-zero status, then treat STRING as a regexp.

  Assuming the chosen branch matches these conditions you would end up with with e.g.:

  feature --upstream--> origin/master
      

  instead of

  feature --upstream--> master --upstream--> origin/master
      

  Which you prefer is a matter of personal preference. If you do prefer the former, then you should add branches such as master, next, and maint to the value of this options.

• User Option: magit-branch-adjust-remote-upstream-alist

  The value of this option is an alist of branches to be used as the upstream when branching a remote branch.

  When creating a local branch from an ephemeral branch located on a remote, e.g. a feature or hotfix branch, then that remote branch should usually not be used as the upstream branch, since the push-remote already allows accessing it and having both the upstream and the push-remote reference the same related branch would be wasteful. Instead a branch like “maint” or “master” should be used as the upstream.

  This option allows specifying the branch that should be used as the upstream when branching certain remote branches. The value is an alist of the form ((UPSTREAM . RULE)...). The first matching element is used, the following elements are ignored.

  UPSTREAM is the branch to be used as the upstream for branches specified by RULE. It can be a local or a remote branch.

  RULE can either be a regular expression, matching branches whose upstream should be the one specified by UPSTREAM. Or it can be a list of the only branches that should not use UPSTREAM; all other branches will. Matching is done after stripping the remote part of the name of the branch that is being branched from.

  If you use a finite set of non-ephemeral branches across all your repositories, then you might use something like:

  (("origin/master" "master" "next" "maint"))
      

  Or if the names of all your ephemeral branches contain a slash, at least in some repositories, then a good value could be:

  (("origin/master" . "/"))
      

  Of course you can also fine-tune:

  (("origin/maint" . "\\`hotfix/")
   ("origin/master" . "\\`feature/"))
      

• Command: magit-branch-orphan

  This command creates and checks out a new orphan branch with contents from a given revision.

• Command: magit-branch-or-checkout

  This command is a hybrid between magit-checkout and magit-branch-and-checkout and is intended as a replacement for the former in magit-branch-popup.

  It first asks the user for an existing branch or revision. If the user input actually can be resolved as a branch or revision, then it checks that out, just like magit-checkout would.

  Otherwise it creates and checks out a new branch using the input as its name. Before doing so it reads the starting-point for the new branch. This is similar to what magit-branch-and-checkout does.

  To use this command instead of magit-checkout add this to your init file:

  (magit-remove-popup-key 'magit-branch-popup :action ?b)
  (magit-define-popup-action 'magit-branch-popup
    ?b "Checkout" 'magit-branch-or-checkout
    'magit-branch t)
      

The Branch Config Popup

• Command: magit-branch-config-popup

  This prefix command shows the following branch-related Git variables in a popup buffer. The values can be changed from that buffer.

  This popup is a sub-popup of several popups that deal with branches, including magit-branch-popup, magit-pull-popup, magit-fetch-popup, magit-pull-and-fetch-popup, and magit-push-popup. In all of these popups “C” is bound to this popup.

The following variables are used to configure a specific branch. The values are being displayed for the current branch (if any). To change the value for another branch invoke magit-branch-config-popup with a prefix argument.

• Variable: branch.NAME.merge

  Together with branch.NAME.remote this variable defines the upstream branch of the local branch named NAME. The value of this variable is the full reference of the upstream branch.

• Variable: branch.NAME.remote

  Together with branch.NAME.merge this variable defines the upstream branch of the local branch named NAME. The value of this variable is the name of the upstream remote.

• Variable: branch.NAME.rebase

  This variable controls whether pulling into the branch named NAME is done by rebasing or by merging the fetched branch.

  • When true then pulling is done by rebasing.
  • When false then pulling is done by merging.
  • When undefined then the value of pull.rebase is used. The default of that variable is false.
• Variable: branch.NAME.pushRemote

  This variable specifies the remote that the branch named NAME is usually pushed to. The value has to be the name of an existing remote.

  It is not possible to specify the name of branch to push the local branch to. The name of the remote branch is always the same as the name of the local branch.

  If this variable is undefined but remote.pushDefault is defined, then the value of the latter is used. By default remote.pushDefault is undefined.

• Variable: branch.NAME.description

  This variable can be used to describe the branch named NAME. That description is used e.g. when turning the branch into a series of patches.

The following variables specify defaults which are used if the above branch-specific variables are not set.

• Variable: pull.rebase

  This variable specifies whether pulling is done by rebasing or by merging. It can be overwritten using branch.NAME.rebase.

  • When true then pulling is done by rebasing.
  • When false (the default) then pulling is done by merging.

  Since it is never a good idea to merge the upstream branch into a feature or hotfix branch and most branches are such branches, you should consider setting this to true, and branch.master.rebase to false.

• Variable: remote.pushDefault

  This variable specifies what remote the local branches are usually pushed to. This can be overwritten per branch using branch.NAME.pushRemote.

The following variables are used during the creation of a branch and control whether the various branch-specific variables are automatically set at this time.

• Variable: branch.autoSetupMerge

  This variable specifies under what circumstances creating a branch NAME should result in the variables branch.NAME.merge and branch.NAME.remote being set according to the starting point used to create the branch. If the starting point isn’t a branch, then these variables are never set.

  • When always then the variables are set regardless of whether the starting point is a local or a remote branch.
  • When true (the default) then the variables are set when the starting point is a remote branch, but not when it is a local branch.
  • When false then the variables are never set.
• Variable: branch.autoSetupRebase

  This variable specifies whether creating a branch NAME should result in the variable branch.NAME.rebase being set to true.

  • When always then the variable is set regardless of whether the starting point is a local or a remote branch.
  • When local then the variable are set when the starting point is a local branch, but not when it is a remote branch.
  • When remote then the variable are set when the starting point is a remote branch, but not when it is a local branch.
  • When never (the default) then the variable is never set.

Note that the respective commands always change the repository-local values. If you want to change the global value, which is used when the local value is undefined, then you have to do so on the command line, e.g.:

git config --global remote.autoSetupMerge always

For more information about these variables you should also see man:git-config Also see man:git-branch, man:git-checkout and *Pushing.

• User Option: magit-prefer-remote-upstream

  This option controls whether commands that read a branch from the user and then set it as the upstream branch, offer a local or a remote branch as default completion candidate, when they have the choice.

  This affects all commands that use magit-read-upstream-branch or magit-read-starting-point, which includes all commands that change the upstream and many which create new branches.

Auxillary Branch Commands

These commands are not available from the branch popup by default.

• Command: magit-branch-shelve

  This command shelve a branch. This is done by deleting the branch, and creating a new reference “refs/shelved/BRANCH-NAME” pointing at the same commit as the branch pointed at. If the deleted branch had a reflog, then that is preserved as the reflog of the new reference.

  This is useful if you want to move a branch out of sight, but are not ready to completely discard it yet.

• Command: magit-branch-unshelve

  This command unshelve a branch that was previously shelved using magit-branch-shelve. This is done by deleting the reference “refs/shelved/BRANCH-NAME” and creating a branch “BRANCH-NAME” pointing at the same commit as the deleted reference pointed at. If the deleted reference had a reflog, then that is restored as the reflog of the branch.

Merging

Also see man:git-merge For information on how to resolve merge conflicts see the next section.

• Key: m, magit-merge-popup

  This prefix command shows the following suffix commands along with the appropriate infix arguments in a popup buffer.

When no merge is in progress, then the popup buffer features the following commands.

• Key: m m, magit-merge

  This command merges another branch or an arbitrary revision into the current branch. The branch or revision to be merged is read in the minibuffer and defaults to the branch at point.

  Unless there are conflicts or a prefix argument is used, then the resulting merge commit uses a generic commit message, and the user does not get a chance to inspect or change it before the commit is created. With a prefix argument this does not actually create the merge commit, which makes it possible to inspect how conflicts were resolved and to adjust the commit message.

• Key: m e, magit-merge-editmsg

  This command merges another branch or an arbitrary revision into the current branch and opens a commit message buffer, so that the user can make adjustments. The commit is not actually created until the user finishes with C-c C-c.

• Key: m n, magit-merge-nocommit

  This command merges another branch or an arbitrary revision into the current branch, but does not actually create the merge commit. The user can then further adjust the merge, even when automatic conflict resolution succeeded and/or adjust the commit message.

• Key: m a, magit-merge-absorb

  This command merges another local branch into the current branch and then removes the former.

  Before the source branch is merged, it is first force pushed to its push-remote, provided the respective remote branch already exists. This ensures that the respective pull-request (if any) won’t get stuck on some obsolete version of the commits that are being merged. Finally, if magit-branch-pull-request was used to create the merged branch, then the respective remote branch is also removed.

• Key: m i, magit-merge-into

  This command merges the current branch into another local branch and then removes the former. The latter becomes the new current branch.

  Before the source branch is merged, it is first force pushed to its push-remote, provided the respective remote branch already exists. This ensures that the respective pull-request (if any) won’t get stuck on some obsolete version of the commits that are being merged. Finally, if magit-branch-pull-request was used to create the merged branch, then the respective remote branch is also removed.

• Key: m s, magit-merge-squash

  This command squashes the changes introduced by another branch or an arbitrary revision into the current branch. This only applies the changes made by the squashed commits. No information is preserved that would allow creating an actual merge commit. Instead of this command you should probably use a command from the apply popup.

• Key: m p, magit-merge-preview

  This command shows a preview of merging another branch or an arbitrary revision into the current branch.

When a merge is in progress, then the popup buffer features these commands instead.

• Key: m m, magit-merge

  After the user resolved conflicts, this command proceeds with the merge. If some conflicts weren’t resolved, then this command fails.

• Key: m a, magit-merge-abort

  This command aborts the current merge operation.

Resolving Conflicts

When merging branches (or otherwise combining or changing history) conflicts can occur. If you edited two completely different parts of the same file in two branches and then merge one of these branches into the other, then Git can resolve that on its own, but if you edit the same area of a file, then a human is required to decide how the two versions, or “sides of the conflict”, are to be combined into one.

Here we can only provide a brief introduction to the subject and point you toward some tools that can help. If you are new to this, then please also consult Git’s own documentation as well as other resources.

If a file has conflicts and Git cannot resolve them by itself, then it puts both versions into the affected file along with special markers whose purpose is to denote the boundaries of the unresolved part of the file and between the different versions. These boundary lines begin with the strings consisting of six times the same character, one of <, |, = and > and are followed by information about the source of the respective versions, e.g.:

<<<<<<< HEAD
Take the blue pill.
=======
Take the red pill.
>>>>>>> feature

In this case you have chosen to take the red pill on one branch and on another you picked the blue pill. Now that you are merging these two diverging branches, Git cannot possibly know which pill you want to take.

To resolve that conflict you have to create a version of the affected area of the file by keeping only one of the sides, possibly by editing it in order to bring in the changes from the other side, remove the other versions as well as the markers, and then stage the result. A possible resolution might be:

Take both pills.

Often it is useful to see not only the two sides of the conflict but also the “original” version from before the same area of the file was modified twice on different branches. Instruct Git to insert that version as well by running this command once:

git config --global merge.conflictStyle diff3

The above conflict might then have looked like this:

<<<<<<< HEAD
Take the blue pill.
||||||| merged common ancestors
Take either the blue or the red pill, but not both.
=======
Take the red pill.
>>>>>>> feature

If that were the case, then the above conflict resolution would not have been correct, which demonstrates why seeing the original version alongside the conflicting versions can be useful.

You can perform the conflict resolution completely by hand, but Emacs also provides some packages that help in the process: Smerge, Ediff (info:ediff), and Emerge (info:emacs#Emerge). Magit does not provide its own tools for conflict resolution, but it does make using Smerge and Ediff more convenient. (Ediff supersedes Emerge, so you probably don’t want to use the latter anyway.)

In the Magit status buffer, files with unresolved conflicts are listed in the “Unstaged changes” and/or “Staged changes” sections. They are prefixed with the word “unmerged”, which in this context essentially is a synonym for “unresolved”.

Pressing RET while point is on such a file section shows a buffer visiting that file, turns on smerge-mode in that buffer, and places point inside the first area with conflicts. You should then resolve that conflict using regular edit commands and/or Smerge commands.

Unfortunately Smerge does not have a manual, but you can get a list of commands and binding C-c ^ C-h and press RET while point is on a command name to read its documentation.

Normally you would edit one version and then tell Smerge to keep only that version. Use C-c ^ m (smerge-keep-mine) to keep the HEAD version or C-c ^ o (smerge-keep-other) to keep the version that follows “|||||||”. Then use C-c ^ n to move to the next conflicting area in the same file. Once you are done resolving conflicts, return to the Magit status buffer. The file should now be shown as “modified”, no longer as “unmerged”, because Smerge automatically stages the file when you save the buffer after resolving the last conflict.

Alternatively you could use Ediff, which uses separate buffers for the different versions of the file. To resolve conflicts in a file using Ediff press e while point is on such a file in the status buffer.

Ediff can be used for other purposes as well. For more information on how to enter Ediff from Magit, see *Ediffing. Explaining how to use Ediff is beyond the scope of this manual, instead see info:ediff.

If you are unsure whether you should Smerge or Ediff, then use the former. It is much easier to understand and use, and except for truly complex conflicts, the latter is usually overkill.

Rebasing

_

Also see man:git-rebase For information on how to resolve conflicts that occur during rebases see the preceding section.

• Key: r, magit-rebase-popup

  This prefix command shows the following suffix commands along with the appropriate infix arguments in a popup buffer.

When no rebase is in progress, then the popup buffer features the following commands.

Using one of these commands starts a rebase sequence. Git might then stop somewhere along the way, either because you told it to do so, or because applying a commit failed due to a conflict. When that happens, then the status buffer shows information about the rebase sequence which is in progress in a section similar to a log section. See *Information About In-Progress Rebase.

• Key: r p, magit-rebase-onto-pushremote

  Rebase the current branch onto branch.<name>.pushRemote. If that variable is unset, then rebase onto remote.pushDefault.

• Key: r u, magit-rebase-onto-upstream

  Rebase the current branch onto its upstream branch.

• Key: r e, magit-rebase

  Rebase the current branch onto a branch read in the minibuffer. All commits that are reachable from head but not from the selected branch TARGET are being rebased.”

• Key: r s, magit-rebase-subset

  Start a non-interactive rebase sequence with commits from START to HEAD onto NEWBASE. START has to be selected from a list of recent commits.

By default Magit uses the --autostash argument, which causes uncommitted changes to be stored in a stash before the rebase begins. These changes are restored after the rebase completes and if possible the stash is removed. If the stash does not apply cleanly, then the stash is not removed. In case something goes wrong when resolving the conflicts, this allows you to start over.

Even though one of the actions is dedicated to interactive rebases, the popup also features the infix argument --interactive. This can be used to turn one of the other, non-interactive rebase variants into an interactive rebase.

For example if you want to clean up a feature branch and at the same time rebase it onto master, then you could use r-iu. But we recommend that you instead do that in two steps. First use ri to cleanup the feature branch, and then in a second step ru to rebase it onto master. That way if things turn out to be more complicated than you thought and/or you make a mistake and have to start over, then you only have to redo half the work.

Explicitly enabling --interactive won’t have an effect on the following commands as they always use that argument anyway, even if it is not enabled in the popup.

• Key: r i, magit-rebase-interactive

  Start an interactive rebase sequence.

• Key: r f, magit-rebase-autosquash

  Combine squash and fixup commits with their intended targets.

• Key: r m, magit-rebase-edit-commit

  Edit a single older commit using rebase.

• Key: r w, magit-rebase-reword-commit

  Reword a single older commit using rebase.

• Key: r k, magit-rebase-remove-commit

  Remove a single older commit using rebase.

When a rebase is in progress, then the popup buffer features these commands instead.

• Key: r r, magit-rebase-continue

  Restart the current rebasing operation.

  In some cases this pops up a commit message buffer for you do edit. With a prefix argument the old message is reused as-is.

• Key: r s, magit-rebase-skip

  Skip the current commit and restart the current rebase operation.

• Key: r e, magit-rebase-edit

  Edit the todo list of the current rebase operation.

• Key: r a, magit-rebase-abort

  Abort the current rebase operation, restoring the original branch.

Editing Rebase Sequences

• Key: C-c C-c, with-editor-finish

  Finish the current editing session by returning with exit code 0. Git then uses the rebase instructions it finds in the file.

• Key: C-c C-k, with-editor-cancel

  Cancel the current editing session by returning with exit code 1. Git then forgoes starting the rebase sequence.

• Key: RET, git-rebase-show-commit

  Show the commit on the current line in another buffer and select that buffer.

• Key: SPC, git-rebase-show-or-scroll-up

  Show the commit on the current line in another buffer without selecting that buffer. If the revision buffer is already visible in another window of the current frame, then instead scroll that window up.

• Key: DEL, git-rebase-show-or-scroll-down

  Show the commit on the current line in another buffer without selecting that buffer. If the revision buffer is already visible in another window of the current frame, then instead scroll that window down.

• Key: p, git-rebase-backward-line

  Move to previous line.

• Key: n, forward-line

  Move to next line.

• Key: M-p, git-rebase-move-line-up

  Move the current commit (or command) up.

• Key: M-n, git-rebase-move-line-down

  Move the current commit (or command) down.

• Key: r, git-rebase-reword

  Edit message of commit on current line.

• Key: e, git-rebase-edit

  Stop at the commit on the current line.

• Key: s, git-rebase-squash

  Meld commit on current line into previous commit, and edit message.

• Key: f, git-rebase-fixup

  Meld commit on current line into previous commit, discarding the current commit’s message.

• Key: k, git-rebase-kill-line

  Kill the current action line.

• Key: c, git-rebase-pick

  Use commit on current line.

• Key: x, git-rebase-exec

  Insert a shell command to be run after the proceeding commit.

  If there already is such a command on the current line, then edit that instead. With a prefix argument insert a new command even when there already is one on the current line. With empty input remove the command on the current line, if any.

• Key: y, git-rebase-insert

  Read an arbitrary commit and insert it below current line.

• Key: C-x u, git-rebase-undo

  Undo some previous changes. Like undo but works in read-only buffers.

• User Option: git-rebase-auto-advance

  Whether to move to next line after changing a line.

• User Option: git-rebase-show-instructions

  Whether to show usage instructions inside the rebase buffer.

• User Option: git-rebase-confirm-cancel

  Whether confirmation is required to cancel.

Information About In-Progress Rebase

While a rebase sequence is in progress, the status buffer features a section that lists the commits that have already been applied as well as the commits that still have to be applied.

The commits are split in two halves. When rebase stops at a commit, either because the user has to deal with a conflict or because s/he explicitly requested that rebase stops at that commit, then point is placed on the commit that separates the two groups, i.e. on HEAD. The commits above it have not been applied yet, while the HEAD and the commits below it have already been applied. In between these two groups of applied and yet-to-be applied commits, there sometimes is a commit which has been dropped.

Each commit is prefixed with a word and these words are additionally shown in different colors to indicate the status of the commits.

The following colors are used:

• Yellow commits have not been applied yet.
• Gray commits have already been applied.
• The blue commit is the HEAD commit.
• The green commit is the commit the rebase sequence stopped at. If this is the same commit as HEAD (e.g. because you haven’t done anything yet after rebase stopped at the commit, then this commit is shown in blue, not green). There can only be a green and a blue commit at the same time, if you create one or more new commits after rebase stops at a commit.
• Red commits have been dropped. They are shown for reference only, e.g. to make it easier to diff.

Of course these colors are subject to the color-theme in use.

The following words are used:

• Commits prefixed with pick, reword, edit, squash, and fixup have not been applied yet. These words have the same meaning here as they do in the buffer used to edit the rebase sequence. See <a href=”*Editing Rebase Sequences”>*Editing Rebase Sequences.
• Commits prefixed with done and onto have already been applied. It is possible for such a commit to be the HEAD, in which case it is blue. Otherwise it is grey.
  • The commit prefixed with onto is the commit on top of which all the other commits are being re-applied. This commit itself did not have to be re-applied, it is the commit rebase did rewind to before starting to re-apply other commits.
  • Commits prefixed with done have already been re-applied. This includes commits that have been re-applied but also new commits that you have created during the rebase.
• All other commits, those not prefixed with any of the above words, are in some way related to the commit at which rebase stopped.

  To determine whether a commit is related to the stopped-at commit their hashes, trees and patch-ids [fn:patch-id] are being compared. The commit message is not used for this purpose.

  Generally speaking commits that are related to the stopped-at commit can have any of the used colors, though not all color/word combinations are possible.

  Words used for stopped-at commits are:

  • When a commit is prefixed with void, then that indicates that Magit knows for sure that all the changes in that commit have been applied using several new commits. This commit is no longer reachable from HEAD, and it also isn’t one of the commits that will be applied when resuming the session.
  • When a commit is prefixed with join, then that indicates that the rebase sequence stopped at that commit due to a conflict - you now have to join (merge) the changes with what has already been applied. In a sense this is the commit rebase stopped at, but while its effect is already in the index and in the worktree (with conflict markers), the commit itself has not actually been applied yet (it isn’t the HEAD). So it is shown in yellow, like the other commits that still have to be applied.
  • When a commit is prefixed with stop or a blue or green same, then that indicates that rebase stopped at this commit, that it is still applied or has been applied again, and that at least its patch-id is unchanged.
    • When a commit is prefixed with stop, then that indicates that rebase stopped at that commit because you requested that earlier, and its patch-id is unchanged. It might even still be the exact same commit.
    • When a commit is prefixed with a blue or green same, then that indicates that while its tree or hash changed, its patch-id did not. If it is blue, then it is the HEAD commit (as always for blue). When it is green, then it no longer is HEAD because other commit have been created since (but before continuing the rebase).
  • When a commit is prefixed with goal, a yellow same,~ or ~work, then that indicates that rebase applied that commit but that you then reset HEAD to an earlier commit (likely to split it up into multiple commits), and that there are some uncommitted changes remaining which likely (but not necessarily) originate from that commit.
    • When a commit is prefixed with goal, then that indicates that it is still possible to create a new commit with the exact same tree (the “goal”) without manually editing any files, by committing the index, or by staging all changes and then committing that. This is the case when the original tree still exists in the index or worktree in untainted form.
    • When a commit is prefixed with a yellow same, then that indicates that it is no longer possible to create a commit with the exact same tree, but that it is still possible to create a commit with the same patch-id. This would be the case if you created a new commit with other changes, but the changes from the original commit still exist in the index or working tree in untainted form.
    • When a commit is prefixed with work, then that indicates that you reset HEAD to an earlier commit, and that there are some staged and/or unstaged changes (likely, but not necessarily) originating from that commit. However it is no longer possible to create a new commit with the same tree or at least the same patch-id because you have already made other changes.
  • When a commit is prefixed with poof or gone, then that indicates that rebase applied that commit but that you then reset HEAD to an earlier commit (likely to split it up into multiple commits), and that there are no uncommitted changes.
    • When a commit is prefixed with poof, then that indicates that it is no longer reachable from HEAD, but that it has been replaced with one or more commits, which together have the exact same effect.
    • When a commit is prefixed with gone, then that indicates that it is no longer reachable from HEAD and that we also cannot determine whether its changes are still in effect in one or more new commits. They might be, but if so, then there must also be other changes which makes it impossible to know for sure.

Do not worry if you do not fully understand the above. That’s okay, you will acquire a good enough understanding through practice.

For other sequence operations such as cherry-picking, a similar section is displayed, but they lack some of the features described above, due to limitations in the git commands used to implement them. Most importantly these sequences only support “picking” a commit but not other actions such as “rewording”, and they do not keep track of the commits which have already been applied.

[fn:patch-id] The patch-id is a hash of the changes introduced by a commit. It differs from the hash of the commit itself, which is a hash of the result of applying that change (i.e. the resulting trees and blobs) as well as author and committer information, the commit message, and the hashes of the parents of the commit. The patch-id hash on the other hand is created only from the added and removed lines, even line numbers and whitespace changes are ignored when calculating this hash. The patch-ids of two commits can be used to answer the question “Do these commits make the same change?”.

Cherry Picking

_

Also see man:git-cherry-pick

• Key: A, magit-cherry-pick-popup

  This prefix command shows the following suffix commands along with the appropriate infix arguments in a popup buffer.

When no cherry-pick or revert is in progress, then the popup buffer features the following commands.

• Key: A A, magit-cherry-pick

  This command copies COMMITS from another branch onto the current branch. If the region selects multiple commits, then those are copied, without prompting. Otherwise the user is prompted for a commit or range, defaulting to the commit at point.

• Key: A a, magit-cherry-apply

  This command applies the changes in COMMITS from another branch onto the current branch. If the region selects multiple commits, then those are used, without prompting. Otherwise the user is prompted for a commit or range, defaulting to the commit at point.

  This command also has a top-level binding, which can be invoked without using the popup by typing a at the top-level.

The following commands not only apply some commits to some branch, but also remove them from some other branch. The removal is performed using either git-update-ref or if necessary git-rebase. Both applying commits as well as removing them using git-rebase can lead to conflicts. If that happens, then these commands abort and you not only have to resolve the conflicts but also finish the process the same way you would have to if these commands didn’t exist at all.

• Key: A h, magit-cherry-harvest

  This command moves the selected COMMITS that must be located on another BRANCH onto the current branch instead, removing them from the former. When this command succeeds, then the same branch is current as before.

  Applying the commits on the current branch or removing them from the other branch can lead to conflicts. When that happens, then this command stops and you have to resolve the conflicts and then finish the process manually.

• Key: A d, magit-cherry-donate

  This command moves the selected COMMITS from the current branch onto another existing BRANCH, removing them from the former. When this command succeeds, then the same branch is current as before.

  Applying the commits on the other branch or removing them from the current branch can lead to conflicts. When that happens, then this command stops and you have to resolve the conflicts and then finish the process manually.

• Key: A n, magit-cherry-spinout

  This command moves the selected COMMITS from the current branch onto a new branch BRANCH, removing them from the former. When this command succeeds, then the same branch is current as before.

  Applying the commits on the other branch or removing them from the current branch can lead to conflicts. When that happens, then this command stops and you have to resolve the conflicts and then finish the process manually.

• Key: A s, magit-cherry-spinoff

  This command moves the selected COMMITS from the current branch onto a new branch BRANCH, removing them from the former. When this command succeeds, then the new branch is checked out.

  Applying the commits on the other branch or removing them from the current branch can lead to conflicts. When that happens, then this command stops and you have to resolve the conflicts and then finish the process manually.

When a cherry-pick or revert is in progress, then the popup buffer features these commands instead.

• Key: A A, magit-sequence-continue

  Resume the current cherry-pick or revert sequence.

• Key: A s, magit-sequence-skip

  Skip the stopped at commit during a cherry-pick or revert sequence.

• Key: A a, magit-sequence-abort

  Abort the current cherry-pick or revert sequence. This discards all changes made since the sequence started.

Reverting

• Key: V, magit-revert-popup

  This prefix command shows the following suffix commands along with the appropriate infix arguments in a popup buffer.

When no cherry-pick or revert is in progress, then the popup buffer features the following commands.

• Key: V V, magit-revert

  Revert a commit by creating a new commit. Prompt for a commit, defaulting to the commit at point. If the region selects multiple commits, then revert all of them, without prompting.

• Key: V v, magit-revert-no-commit

  Revert a commit by applying it in reverse to the working tree. Prompt for a commit, defaulting to the commit at point. If the region selects multiple commits, then revert all of them, without prompting.

When a cherry-pick or revert is in progress, then the popup buffer features these commands instead.

• Key: V A, magit-sequence-continue

  Resume the current cherry-pick or revert sequence.

• Key: V s, magit-sequence-skip

  Skip the stopped at commit during a cherry-pick or revert sequence.

• Key: V a, magit-sequence-abort

  Abort the current cherry-pick or revert sequence. This discards all changes made since the sequence started.

Resetting

Also see man:git-reset

• Key: x, magit-reset

  Reset the head and index to some commit read from the user and defaulting to the commit at point. The working tree is kept as-is. With a prefix argument also reset the working tree.

• Key: X m, magit-reset-head

  Reset the HEAD and index to some commit read from the user and defaulting to the commit at point. The working tree is kept as-is.

• Key: X s, magit-reset-soft

  Reset the HEAD to some commit read from the user and defaulting to the commit at point. The index and the working tree are kept as-is.

• Key: X h, magit-reset-hard

  Reset the HEAD, index, and working tree to some commit read from the user and defaulting to the commit at point.

• Key: X i, magit-reset-index

  Reset the index to some commit read from the user and defaulting to the commit at point. Keep the HEAD and working tree as-is, so if the commit refers to the HEAD, then this effectively unstages all changes.

• Key: X w, magit-reset-worktree

  Reset the working tree to some commit read from the user and defaulting to the commit at point. Keep the HEAD and index as-is.

• Key: X f, magit-file-checkout

  Update file in the working tree and index to the contents from a revision. Both the revision and file are read from the user.

Stashing

Also see man:git-stash

• Key: z, magit-stash-popup

  This prefix command shows the following suffix commands along with the appropriate infix arguments in a popup buffer.

• Key: z z, magit-stash

  Create a stash of the index and working tree. Untracked files are included according to popup arguments. One prefix argument is equivalent to --include-untracked while two prefix arguments are equivalent to --all.

• Key: z i, magit-stash-index

  Create a stash of the index only. Unstaged and untracked changes are not stashed.

• Key: z w, magit-stash-worktree

  Create a stash of unstaged changes in the working tree. Untracked files are included according to popup arguments. One prefix argument is equivalent to --include-untracked while two prefix arguments are equivalent to --all.

• Key: z x, magit-stash-keep-index

  Create a stash of the index and working tree, keeping index intact. Untracked files are included according to popup arguments. One prefix argument is equivalent to --include-untracked while two prefix arguments are equivalent to --all.

• Key: z Z, magit-snapshot

  Create a snapshot of the index and working tree. Untracked files are included according to popup arguments. One prefix argument is equivalent to --include-untracked while two prefix arguments are equivalent to --all.

• Key: z I, magit-snapshot-index

  Create a snapshot of the index only. Unstaged and untracked changes are not stashed.

• Key: z W, magit-snapshot-worktree

  Create a snapshot of unstaged changes in the working tree. Untracked files are included according to popup arguments. One prefix argument is equivalent to --include-untracked while two prefix arguments are equivalent to --all-.

• Key: z a, magit-stash-apply

  Apply a stash to the working tree. Try to preserve the stash index. If that fails because there are staged changes, apply without preserving the stash index.

• Key: z p, magit-stash-pop

  Apply a stash to the working tree and remove it from stash list. Try to preserve the stash index. If that fails because there are staged changes, apply without preserving the stash index and forgo removing the stash.

• Key: z k, magit-stash-drop

  Remove a stash from the stash list. When the region is active, offer to drop all contained stashes.

• Key: z v, magit-stash-show

  Show all diffs of a stash in a buffer.

• Key: z b, magit-stash-branch

  Create and checkout a new BRANCH from STASH. The branch starts at the commit that was current when the stash was created.

• Key: z B, magit-stash-branch-here

  Create and checkout a new BRANCH using magit-branch with the current branch or HEAD as the starting-point. Then apply STASH, dropping it if it applies cleanly.

• Key: z f, magit-stash-format-patch

  Create a patch from STASH.

• Key: k, magit-stash-clear

  Remove all stashes saved in REF’s reflog by deleting REF.

• Key: z l, magit-stash-list

  List all stashes in a buffer.

• User Option: magit-stashes-margin

  This option specifies whether the margin is initially shown in stashes buffers and how it is formatted.

  The value has the form (INIT STYLE WIDTH AUTHOR AUTHOR-WIDTH).

  • If INIT is non-nil, then the margin is shown initially.
  • STYLE controls how to format the committer date. It can be one of age (to show the age of the commit), age-abbreviated (to abbreviate the time unit to a character), or a string (suitable for format-time-string) to show the actual date.
  • WIDTH controls the width of the margin. This exists for forward compatibility and currently the value should not be changed.
  • AUTHOR controls whether the name of the author is also shown by default.
  • AUTHOR-WIDTH has to be an integer. When the name of the author is shown, then this specifies how much space is used to do so.

Transferring

Remotes

The Remote Popup

The popup magit-remote-popup is used to add remotes and to make changes to existing remotes. This popup only deals with remotes themselves, not with branches or the transfer of commits. Those features are available from separate popups.

Also see man:git-remote

• Key: M, magit-remote-popup

  This prefix command shows the following suffix commands along with the appropriate infix arguments in a popup buffer.

• User Option: magit-remote-popup-show-variables

  This option controls whether the magit-remote-popup shows remote related Git variables. When set to nil, no variables are displayed directly in this popup, and the sub-popup magit-remote-config-popup has to be used instead to view and change remote related variables.

• Key: M C, magit-remote-config-popup

  This command shows remote related variables in a separate popup. By default this asks the user for which remote the variables should be shown. When magit-remote-popup-show-variables is nil, then it shows the variables for the upstream of the current branch or “origin” it that branch has no remote upstream. To select another remote use a prefix argument.

• Key: M a, magit-remote-add

  This command add a remote and fetches it. The remote name and url are read in the minibuffer.

• Key: M r, magit-remote-rename

  This command renames a remote. Both the old and the new names are read in the minibuffer.

• Key: M u, magit-remote-set-url

  This command changes the url of a remote. Both the remote and the new url are read in the minibuffer.

• Key: M k, magit-remote-remove

  This command deletes a remote, read in the minibuffer.

• Key: M p, magit-remote-prune

  This command removes stale remote-tracking branches for a remote read in the minibuffer.

• Key: M P, magit-remote-prune-refspecs

  This command removes stale refspecs for a remote read in the minibuffer.

  A refspec is stale if there no longer exists at least one branch on the remote that would be fetched due to that refspec. A stale refspec is problematic because its existence causes Git to refuse to fetch according to the remaining non-stale refspecs.

  If only stale refspecs remain, then this command offers to either delete the remote or to replace the stale refspecs with the default refspec (“+refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/REMOTE/*”).

  This command also removes the remote-tracking branches that were created due to the now stale refspecs. Other stale branches are not removed.

• User Option: magit-remote-add-set-remote.pushDefault

  This option controls whether the user is asked whether they want to set remote.pushDefault after adding a remote.

  If ask, then users is always ask. If ask-if-unset, then the user is only if the variable isn’t set already. If nil, then the user isn’t asked and the variable isn’t set. If the value is a string, then the variable is set without the user being asked, provided that the name of the added remote is equal to that string and the variable isn’t already set.

The Remote Config Popup

• Command: magit-remote-config-popup

  This prefix command shows the following remote-related Git variables in a popup buffer. The values can be changed from that buffer.

  This popup is a sub-popup of the magit-remote-popup in which “C” is bound to this popup.

The following variables are used to configure a specific remote. The values are being displayed for the upstream remote of the current branch. To change the value for another remote invoke magit-remote-config-popup with a prefix argument.

• Variable: remote.NAME.url

  This variable specifies the url of the remote named NAME. It can have multiple values.

• Variable: remote.NAME.fetch

  The refspec used when fetching from the remote named NAME. It can have multiple values.

• Variable: remote.NAME.pushurl

  This variable specifies the url used for fetching from the remote named NAME. If it is not specified, then remote.NAME.url is used instead. It can have multiple values.

• Variable: remote.NAME.push

  The refspec used when pushing to the remote named NAME. It can have multiple values.

• Variable: remote.NAME.tagOpts

  This variable specifies what tags are fetched by default. If the value is --no-tags then no tags are fetched. If the value is --tags, then all tags are fetched. If this variable has not value, then only tags are fetched that are reachable from fetched branches.

Fetching

For information about the differences between the upstream and the push-remote, see *Branching.

Also see man:git-fetch

• Key: f, magit-fetch-popup

  This prefix command shows the following suffix commands along with the appropriate infix arguments in a popup buffer.

• Key: f p, magit-fetch-from-pushremote

  Fetch from the push-remote of the current branch.

• Key: f u, magit-fetch-from-upstream

  Fetch from the upstream of the current branch.

• Key: f e, magit-fetch

  Fetch from another repository.

• Key: f o, magit-fetch-branch

  Fetch a branch from a remote, both of which are read from the minibuffer.

• Key: f r, magit-fetch-refspec

  Fetch from a remote using an explicit refspec, both of which are read from the minibuffer.

• Key: f a, magit-fetch-all

  Fetch from all remotes.

• Key: f m, magit-submodule-fetch

  Fetch all submodules. With a prefix argument fetch all remotes of all submodules.

Instead of using one popup for fetching and another for pulling, you could also use magit-pull-and-fetch-popup. See its doc-string for more information.

Pulling

For information about the differences between the upstream and the push-remote, see *Branching.

Also see man:git-pull

• Key: F, magit-pull-popup

  This prefix command shows the following suffix commands in a popup buffer.

• Key: F p, magit-pull-from-pushremote

  Pull from the push-remote of the current branch.

• Key: F u, magit-pull-from-upstream

  Pull from the upstream of the current branch.

• Key: F e, magit-pull

  Pull from a branch read in the minibuffer.

Instead of using one popup for fetching and another for pulling, you could also use magit-pull-and-fetch-popup. See its doc-string for more information.

Pushing

For information about the differences between the upstream and the push-remote, see *Branching.

Also see man:git-push

• Key: P, magit-push-popup

  This prefix command shows the following suffix commands along with the appropriate infix arguments in a popup buffer.

• Key: P p, magit-push-current-to-pushremote

  Push the current branch to branch.<name>.pushRemote or if that is unset to remote.pushDefault.

  When magit-push-current-set-remote-if-missing is non-nil and the push-remote is not configured, then read the push-remote from the user, set it, and then push to it. With a prefix argument the push-remote can be changed before pushed to it.

• Key: P u, magit-push-current-to-upstream

  Push the current branch to its upstream branch.

  When magit-push-current-set-remote-if-missing is non-nil and the push-remote is not configured, then read the upstream from the user, set it, and then push to it. With a prefix argument the push-remote can be changed before pushed to it.

• Key: P e, magit-push-current

  Push the current branch to a branch read in the minibuffer.

• Key: P o, magit-push

  Push an arbitrary branch or commit somewhere. Both the source and the target are read in the minibuffer.

• Key: P r, magit-push-refspecs

  Push one or multiple refspecs to a remote, both of which are read in the minibuffer.

  To use multiple refspecs, separate them with commas. Completion is only available for the part before the colon, or when no colon is used.

• Key: P m, magit-push-matching

  Push all matching branches to another repository. If multiple remotes exit, then read one from the user. If just one exists, use that without requiring confirmation.

• Key: P t, magit-push-tags

  Push all tags to another repository. If only one remote exists, then push to that. Otherwise prompt for a remote, offering the remote configured for the current branch as default.

• Key: P T, magit-push-tag

  Push a tag to another repository.

Two more push commands exist, which by default are not available from the push popup. See their doc-strings for instructions on how to add them to the popup.

• Command: magit-push-implicitly args

  Push somewhere without using an explicit refspec.

  This command simply runs git push -v [ARGS]. ARGS are the arguments specified in the popup buffer. No explicit refspec arguments are used. Instead the behavior depends on at least these Git variables: push.default, remote.pushDefault, branch.<branch>.pushRemote, branch.<branch>.remote, branch.<branch>.merge, and remote.<remote>.push.

• Command: magit-push-to-remote remote args

  Push to the remote REMOTE without using an explicit refspec. The remote is read in the minibuffer.

  This command simply runs git push -v [ARGS] REMOTE. ARGS are the arguments specified in the popup buffer. No refspec arguments are used. Instead the behavior depends on at least these Git variables: push.default, remote.pushDefault, branch.<branch>.pushRemote, branch.<branch>.remote, branch.<branch>.merge, and remote.<remote>.push.

• User Option: magit-push-current-set-remote-if-missing

  This option controls whether missing remotes are configured before pushing.

  When nil, then the command magit-push-current-to-pushremote and magit-push-current-to-upstream do not appear in the push popup if the push-remote resp. upstream is not configured. If the user invokes one of these commands anyway, then it raises an error.

  When non-nil, then these commands always appear in the push popup. But if the required configuration is missing, then they do appear in a way that indicates that this is the case. If the user invokes one of them, then it asks for the necessary configuration, stores the configuration, and then uses it to push a first time.

  This option also affects whether the argument --set-upstream is available in the popup. If the value is non-nil, then that argument is redundant. But note that changing the value of this option does not take affect immediately, the argument will only be added or removed after restarting Emacs.

Creating and Sending Patches

• Key: W, magit-patch-popup

  This prefix command shows the following suffix commands along with the appropriate infix arguments in a popup buffer.

• Key: W p, magit-format-patch

  Create patches for a set commits. If the region marks commits, then create patches for those. Otherwise prompt for a range or a single commit, defaulting to the commit at point.

• Key: W r, magit-request-pull

  Request that upstream pulls from your public repository.

It is also possible to save a plain patch file by using C-x C-w inside a magit-diff-mode or magit-revision-mode buffer.

Applying Patches

Also see man:git-am and man:git-apply

• Key: w, magit-am-popup

  This prefix command shows the following suffix commands along with the appropriate infix arguments in a popup buffer.

• Key: w w, magit-am-apply-patches

  Apply one or more patches. If the region marks files, then apply those patches. Otherwise read a file name in the minibuffer defaulting to the file at point.

• Key: w m, magit-am-apply-maildir

  Apply the patches from a maildir.

When an “am” operation is in progress, then the popup buffer features these commands instead.

• Key: w w, magit-am-continue

  Resume the current patch applying sequence.

• Key: w s, magit-am-skip

  Skip the stopped at patch during a patch applying sequence.

• Key: w a, magit-am-abort

  Abort the current patch applying sequence. This discards all changes made since the sequence started.

In addition to the commands listed at the top, the “am” popup also has a binding for the related “patch” popup.

• Key: w a, magit-patch-apply-popup

  This prefix command shows the following suffix commands along with the appropriate infix arguments in a popup buffer.

• Key: w a a, magit-patch-apply

  This command applies a simple patch file, which may not contain any Git metadata in addition to the actual diff.

Miscellaneous

Tagging

Also see man:git-tag

• Key: t, magit-tag-popup

  This prefix command shows the following suffix commands along with the appropriate infix arguments in a popup buffer.

• Key: t t, magit-tag

  Create a new tag with the given NAME at REV. With a prefix argument annotate the tag.

• Key: t k, magit-tag-delete

  Delete one or more tags. If the region marks multiple tags (and nothing else), then offer to delete those. Otherwise, prompt for a single tag to be deleted, defaulting to the tag at point.

• Key: t p, magit-tag-prune

  Offer to delete tags missing locally from REMOTE, and vice versa.

• Command: magit-tag-release

  Create an opinionated release tag.

  Assume version tags that match “\`v?[0-9]\(\.[0-9]\)*\’”. Prompt for the name of the new tag using the highest existing tag as initial input and call “git tag –annotate –sign -m MSG” TAG, regardless of whether these arguments are enabled in the popup. Given a TAG “v1.2.3” and a repository “/path/to/foo-bar”, the MESSAGE would be “Foo-Bar 1.2.3”.

  Because it is so opinionated, this command is not available from the tag popup by default.

Notes

Also see man:git-notes

• Key: T, magit-notes-popup

  This prefix command shows the following suffix commands along with the appropriate infix arguments in a popup buffer.

• Key: T T, magit-notes-edit

  Edit the note attached to a commit, defaulting to the commit at point.

  By default use the value of Git variable core.notesRef or “refs/notes/commits” if that is undefined.

• Key: T r, magit-notes-remove

  Remove the note attached to a commit, defaulting to the commit at point.

  By default use the value of Git variable core.notesRef or “refs/notes/commits” if that is undefined.

• Key: T p, magit-notes-prune

  Remove notes about unreachable commits.

It is possible to merge one note ref into another. That may result in conflicts which have to resolved in the temporary worktree “.git/NOTES_MERGE_WORKTREE”.

• Key: T m, magit-notes-merge

  Merge the notes of a ref read from the user into the current notes ref. The current notes ref is the value of Git variable core.notesRef or “refs/notes/commits” if that is undefined.

When a notes merge is in progress then the popup features the following suffix commands, instead of those listed above.

• Key: T c, magit-notes-merge-commit

  Commit the current notes ref merge, after manually resolving conflicts.

• Key: T a, magit-notes-merge-abort

  Abort the current notes ref merge.

The following variables control what notes reference magit-notes-*, git notes and git show act on and display. Both the local and global values are displayed and can be modified.

• Variable: core.notesRef

  This variable specifies the notes ref that is displayed by default and which commands act on by default.

• Variable: notes.displayRef

  This variable specifies additional notes ref to be displayed in addition to the ref specified by core.notesRef. It can have multiple values and may end with * to display all refs in the refs/notes/ namespace (or ** if some names contain slashes).

Submodules

_

Also see man:git-submodule

Listing Submodules

The command magit-list-submodules displays a list of the current repository’s submodules in a separate buffer. It’s also possible to display information about submodules directly in the status buffer of the super-repository by adding magit-insert-submodules to the hook magit-status-sections-hook as described in *Status Module Sections.

• Command: magit-list-submodules

  This command displays a list of the current repository’s submodules in a separate buffer.

  It can be invoked by pressing RET on the section titled “Modules”.

• User Option: magit-submodule-list-columns

  This option controls what columns are displayed by the command magit-list-submodules and how they are displayed.

  Each element has the form (HEADER WIDTH FORMAT PROPS).

  HEADER is the string displayed in the header. WIDTH is the width of the column. FORMAT is a function that is called with one argument, the repository identification (usually its basename), and with default-directory bound to the toplevel of its working tree. It has to return a string to be inserted or nil. PROPS is an alist that supports the keys :right-align and :pad-right.

• Function: magit-insert-submodules

  Insert sections for all submodules. For each section insert the path, the branch, and the output of git describe --tags, or, failing that, the abbreviated HEAD commit hash.

  Press RET on such a submodule section to show its own status buffer. Press RET on the “Modules” section to display a list of submodules in a separate buffer. This shows additional information not displayed in the super-repository’s status buffer.

Submodule Popup

• Key: o, magit-submodule-popup

  This prefix command shows the following suffix commands along with the appropriate infix arguments in a popup buffer.

Some of the below commands default to act on the modules that are selected using the region. For brevity their description talk about “the selected modules”, but if no modules are selected, then they act on the current module instead, or if point isn’t on a module, then the read a single module to act on. With a prefix argument these commands ignore the selection and the current module and instead act on all suitable modules.

• Key: o a, magit-submodule-add

  This commands adds the repository at URL as a module. Optional PATH is the path to the module relative to the root of the super-project. If it is nil then the path is determined based on URL.

• Key: o r, magit-submodule-register

  This command registers the selected modules by copying their urls from “.gitmodules” to “$GIT_DIR/config”. These values can then be edited before running magit-submodule-populate. If you don’t need to edit any urls, then use the latter directly.

• Key: o p, magit-submodule-populate

  This command creates the working directory or directories of the selected modules, checking out the recorded commits.

• Key: o u, magit-submodule-update

  This command updates the selected modules checking out the recorded commits.

• Key: o s, magit-submodule-synchronize

  This command synchronizes the urls of the selected modules, copying the values from “.gitmodules” to the “.git/config” of the super-project as well those of the modules.

• Key: o d, magit-submodule-unpopulate

  This command removes the working directory of the selected modules.

• Key: o l, magit-list-submodules

  This command displays a list of the current repository’s modules.

• Key: o f, magit-fetch-modules

  This command fetches all modules.

  Option magit-fetch-modules-jobs controls how many submodules are being fetched in parallel. Also fetch the super-repository, because git fetch does not support not doing that. With a prefix argument fetch all remotes.

Subtree

Also see man:git-subtree

• Key: O, magit-tree-popup

  This prefix command shows the following suffix commands along with the appropriate infix arguments in a popup buffer.

Most infix arguments only apply to some of the git subtree subcommands. When an argument that does not apply to the invoked command is set, then it is silently ignored.

When the --prefix argument is set in the popup buffer, then that is used. Otherwise the prefix is read in the minibuffer.

• Key: O a, magit-subtree-add

  Add COMMIT from REPOSITORY as a new subtree at PREFIX.

• Key: O c, magit-subtree-add-commit

  Add COMMIT as a new subtree at PREFIX.

• Key: O m, magit-subtree-merge

  Merge COMMIT into the PREFIX subtree.

• Key: O f, magit-subtree-pull

  Pull COMMIT from REPOSITORY into the PREFIX subtree.

• Key: O p, magit-subtree-push

  Extract the history of the subtree PREFIX and push it to REF on REPOSITORY.

• Key: O s, magit-subtree-split

  Extract the history of the subtree PREFIX.

Worktree

Also see man:git-worktree

• Key: %, magit-worktree-popup

  This prefix command shows the following suffix commands in a popup buffer.

• Key: % b, magit-worktree-checkout

  Checkout BRANCH in a new worktree at PATH.

• Key: % c, magit-worktree-branch

  Create a new BRANCH and check it out in a new worktree at PATH.

• Key: % p, magit-worktree-checkout-pull-request

  Create, configure and checkout a new worktree from a pull-request.

  This is like magit-checkout-pull-request (which see) except that it also creates a new worktree.

• Key: % k, magit-worktree-delete

  Delete a worktree, defaulting to the worktree at point. The primary worktree cannot be deleted.

• Key: % g, magit-worktree-status

  Show the status for the worktree at point.

  If there is no worktree at point, then read one in the minibuffer. If the worktree at point is the one whose status is already being displayed in the current buffer, then show it in Dired instead.

Common Commands

These are some of the commands that can be used in all buffers whose major-modes derive from magit-mode. There are other common commands beside the ones below, but these didn’t fit well anywhere else.

• Key: M-w, magit-copy-section-value

  This command saves the value of the current section to the kill-ring, and, provided that the current section is a commit, branch, or tag section, it also pushes the (referenced) revision to the magit-revision-stack.

  When the current section is a branch or a tag, and a prefix argument is used, then it saves the revision at its tip to the kill-ring instead of the reference name.

• Key: C-w, magit-copy-buffer-revision

  This command saves the revision being displayed in the current buffer to the kill-ring and also pushes it to the magit-revision-stack. It is mainly intended for use in magit-revision-mode buffers, the only buffers where it is always unambiguous exactly which revision should be saved.

  Most other Magit buffers usually show more than one revision, in some way or another, so this command has to select one of them, and that choice might not always be the one you think would have been the best pick.

Outside of Magit M-w and C-w are usually bound to kill-ring-save and kill-region, and these commands would also be useful in Magit buffers. Therefore when the region is active, then both of these commands behave like kill-ring-save instead of as described above.

Wip Modes

Git keeps committed changes around long enough for users to recover changes they have accidentally deleted. It does so by not garbage collecting any committed but no longer referenced objects for a certain period of time, by default 30 days.

But Git does not keep track of uncommitted changes in the working tree and not even the index (the staging area). Because Magit makes it so convenient to modify uncommitted changes, it also makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot in the process.

For that reason Magit provides three global modes that save tracked files to work-in-progress references after or before certain actions. (Untracked files are never saved and these modes also only work after the first commit has been created).

Two separate work-in-progress references are used to track the state of the index and of the working tree: “refs/wip/index/<branchref>” and “refs/wip/wtree/<branchref>”, where <branchref> is the full ref of the current branch, e.g. “refs/heads/master”. When the HEAD is detached then “HEAD” is in place of <branchref>.

Checking out another branch (or detaching HEAD) causes the use of different wip refs for subsequent changes, but the old refs are not deleted.

Creating a commit and then making a change causes the wip refs to be recreated to fork from the new commit. But the old commits on the wip refs are not lost. They are still available from the reflog. To make it easier to see when the fork point of a wip ref was changed, an additional commit with the message “restart autosaving” is created on it (xxO commits below are such boundary commits).

Starting with

      BI0---BI1    refs/wip/index/refs/heads/master
     /
A---B              refs/heads/master
     \
      BW0---BW1    refs/wip/wtree/refs/heads/master

and committing the staged changes and editing and saving a file would result in

      BI0---BI1        refs/wip/index/refs/heads/master
     /
A---B---C              refs/heads/master
     \   \
      \   CW0---CW1    refs/wip/wtree/refs/heads/master
       \
        BW0---BW1      refs/wip/wtree/refs/heads/master@{2}

The fork-point of the index wip ref is not changed until some change is being staged. Likewise just checking out a branch or creating a commit does not change the fork-point of the working tree wip ref. The fork-points are not adjusted until there actually is a change that should be committed to the respective wip ref.

• User Option: magit-wip-merge-branch

  This option controls whether the current branch is merged into the wip refs after a new commit was created on the branch. If nil (currently the default), then no merge is perfomed and wip refs are reset as described above.

  If this is non-nil and the current branch has new commits, then it is merged into the wip ref before creating a new wip commit. This makes it easier to inspect wip history and the wip commits are never garbage collected.

    *--*--*--*--*--*       refs/wip/index/refs/heads/master
   /     /     /
  A-----B-----C            refs/heads/master
      

To view the log for a branch and its wip refs use the commands magit-wip-log and magit-wip-log-current. You should use --graph when using these commands. Alternatively you can use the reflog to show all commits that ever existed on a wip ref. You can then recover lost changes from the commits shown in the log or reflog.

• Command: magit-wip-log

  This command shows the log for a branch and its wip refs.

  With a negative prefix argument only the worktree wip ref is shown. The absolute numeric value of the prefix argument controls how many “branches” of each wip ref are shown.

• Command: magit-wip-log-current

  This command shows the log for the current branch and its wip refs.

  With a negative prefix argument only the worktree wip ref is shown. The absolute numeric value of the prefix argument controls how many “branches” of each wip ref are shown.

• Key: X w, magit-reset-worktree

  This command resets the working tree to some commit read from the user and defaulting to the commit at point, while keeping the HEAD and index as-is.

  This can be used to restore files to the state committed to a wip ref. Note that this will discard any unstaged changes that might have existed before invoking this command (but of course only after committing that to the working tree wip ref).

There exists a total of three global modes that save to the wip refs, which might seem excessive, but allows fine tuning of when exactly changes are being committed to the wip refs. Enabling all modes makes it less likely that a change slips through the cracks.

Setting the following variables directly does not take effect; either customize them or call the respective mode function.

• User Option: magit-wip-after-save-mode

  When this mode is enabled, then saving a buffer that visits a file tracked in a Git repository causes its current state to be committed to the working tree wip ref for the current branch.

• User Option: magit-wip-after-apply-mode

  When this mode is enabled, then applying (i.e. staging, unstaging, discarding, reversing, and regularly applying) a change to a file tracked in a Git repository causes its current state to be committed to the index and/or working tree wip refs for the current branch.

If you only ever edit files using Emacs and only ever interact with Git using Magit, then the above two modes should be enough to protect each and every change from accidental loss. In practice nobody does that. So an additional mode exists that does commit to the wip refs before making changes that could cause the loss of earlier changes.

• User Option: magit-wip-before-change-mode

  When this mode is enabled, then certain commands commit the existing changes to the files they are about to make changes to.

• Function: magit-wip-commit-initial-backup

  Adding this function to before-save-hook causes the current version of the file to be committed to the worktree wip ref before the modifications in the buffer are saved. It backs up the same version of the file as backup-buffer would but, instead of using a backup file as backup-buffer would, it uses the same worktree wip ref as used by the various Magit Wip modes. Like backup-buffer, it only does this once; unless you kill the buffer and visit the file again only one backup will be created per Emacs session.

  This function ignores the variables that affect backup-buffer and can be used along-side that function, which is recommended because this function only backs up files that are tracked in a Git repository.

Note that even if you enable all three modes and add the above function to the intended hook, this won’t give you perfect protection. The most likely scenario for losing changes despite the use of these modes is making a change outside Emacs and then destroying it also outside Emacs. In some such a scenario, Magit, being an Emacs package, didn’t get the opportunity to keep you from shooting yourself in the foot.

When you are unsure whether Magit did commit a change to the wip refs, then you can explicitly request that all changes to all tracked files are being committed.

• Key: M-x magit-wip-commit, magit-wip-commit

  This command commits all changes to all tracked files to the index and working tree work-in-progress refs. Like the modes described above, it does not commit untracked files, but it does check all tracked files for changes. Use this command when you suspect that the modes might have overlooked a change made outside Emacs/Magit.

• User Option: magit-wip-after-save-local-mode-lighter

  Mode-line lighter for magit-wip-after-save-local-mode.

• User Option: magit-wip-after-apply-mode-lighter

  Mode-line lighter for magit-wip-after-apply-mode.

• User Option: magit-wip-before-change-mode-lighter

  Mode-line lighter for magit-wip-before-change-mode.

• User Option: magit-wip-namespace

  The namespace used for work-in-progress refs. It has to end with a slash. The wip refs are named “<namespace>index/<branchref>” and “<namespace>wtree/<branchref>”. When snapshots are created while the HEAD is detached then “HEAD” is used in place of <branchref>.

Minor Mode for Buffers Visiting Files

The magit-file-mode enables certain Magit features in file-visiting buffers belonging to a Git repository. It should be enabled globally using global-magit-file-mode. Currently this mode only establishes a few key bindings, but this might be extended in the future.

• User Option: magit-file-mode

  Whether to establish certain Magit key bindings in all file-visiting buffers belonging to a Git repository. This establishes the bindings suggested in *Getting Started (but only for file-visiting buffers), and additionally binds C-c M-g to magit-file-popup.

• Key: C-c M-g, magit-file-popup

  This prefix command shows a popup buffer featuring suffix commands that operate on the file being visited in the current buffer.

• Key: C-c M-g s, magit-stage-file

  Stage all changes to the file being visited in the current buffer.

• Key: C-c M-g u, magit-unstage-file

  Unstage all changes to the file being visited in the current buffer.

• Key: C-c M-g c, magit-commit-popup

  This prefix command shows suffix commands along with the appropriate infix arguments in a popup buffer. See *Initiating a Commit.

• Key: C-c M-g D, magit-diff-buffer-file-popup

  This prefix command shows the same suffix commands and infix arguments in a popup buffer as magit-diff-popup. But this variant has to be called from a file-visiting buffer and the visited file is automatically used in the popup to limit the diff to that file.

• Key: C-c M-g d, magit-diff-buffer-file

  This command shows the diff for the file of blob that the current buffer visits.

• User Option: magit-diff-buffer-file-locked

  This option controls whether magit-diff-buffer-file uses a dedicated buffer. See *Modes and Buffers.

• Key: C-c M-g L, magit-log-buffer-file-popup

  This prefix command shows the same suffix commands and infix arguments in a popup buffer as magit-log-popup. But this variant has to be called from a file-visiting buffer and the visited file is automatically used in the popup to limit the log to that file.

• Key: C-c M-g l, magit-log-buffer-file

  This command shows the log for the file of blob that the current buffer visits. Renames are followed when a prefix argument is used or when --follow is part of magit-log-arguments. When the region is active, the log is restricted to the selected line range.

• Key: C-c M-g t, magit-log-trace-definition

  This command shows the log for the definition at point.

• User Option: magit-log-buffer-file-locked

  This option controls whether magit-log-buffer-file uses a dedicated buffer. See *Modes and Buffers.

• Key: C-c M-g B, magit-blame-popup

  This prefix command shows all blaming suffix command along with the appropriate infix arguments in a popup buffer. See *Blaming.

• Key: C-c M-g b, magit-blame

  This command shows for each line the revision in which it was added.

• Key: C-c M-g r, magit-blame-removal

  This command shows for each line the revision in which it was removed. This command is only available in blob-visiting buffers.

• Key: C-c M-g f, magit-blame-reverse

  This command shows for each line the last revision in which it still exists. This command is only available in blob-visiting buffers.

• Key: C-c M-g e, magit-edit-line-commit

  This command makes the commit editable that added the current line.

  With a prefix argument it makes the commit editable that removes the line, if any. The commit is determined using git blame and made editable using git rebase --interactive if it is reachable from HEAD, or by checking out the commit (or a branch that points at it) otherwise.

• Key: C-c M-g p, magit-blob-previous

  Visit the previous blob which modified the current file.

There are a few additional commands that operate on a single file but are not available from the file popup by default:

• Command: magit-file-rename

  This command renames a file read from the user.

• Command: magit-file-delete

  This command deletes a file read from the user.

• Command: magit-file-untrack

  This command untracks a file read from the user.

• Command: magit-file-checkout

  This command updates a file in the working tree and index to the contents from a revision. Both the revision and file are read from the user.

You could add them to the popup like so:

(magit-define-popup-action 'magit-file-popup
  ?R "Rename file" 'magit-file-rename)
(magit-define-popup-action 'magit-file-popup
  ?K "Delete file" 'magit-file-delete)
(magit-define-popup-action 'magit-file-popup
  ?U "Untrack file" 'magit-file-untrack)
(magit-define-popup-action 'magit-file-popup
  ?C "Checkout file" 'magit-file-checkout)

Minor Mode for Buffers Visiting Blobs

The magit-blob-mode enables certain Magit features in blob-visiting buffers. Such buffers can be created using magit-find-file and some of the commands mentioned below, which also take care of turning on this minor mode. Currently this mode only establishes a few key bindings, but this might be extended.

• Key: p, magit-blob-previous

  Visit the previous blob which modified the current file.

• Key: n, magit-blob-next

  Visit the next blob which modified the current file.

• Key: q, magit-kill-this-buffer

  Kill the current buffer.

Customizing

_

Both Git and Emacs are highly customizable. Magit is both a Git porcelain as well as an Emacs package, so it makes sense to customize it using both Git variables as well as Emacs options. However this flexibility doesn’t come without problems, including but not limited to the following.

• Some Git variables automatically have an effect in Magit without requiring any explicit support. Sometimes that is desirable - in other cases, it breaks Magit.

  When a certain Git setting breaks Magit but you want to keep using that setting on the command line, then that can be accomplished by overriding the value for Magit only by appending something like ("-c" "some.variable=compatible-value") to magit-git-global-arguments.

• Certain settings like fetch.prune=true are respected by Magit commands (because they simply call the respective Git command) but their value is not reflected in the respective popup buffers. In this case the --prune argument in magit-fetch-popup might be active or inactive depending on the value of magit-fetch-arguments only, but that doesn’t keep the Git variable from being honored by the suffix commands anyway. So pruning might happen despite the --prune arguments being displayed in a way that seems to indicate that no pruning will happen.

I intend to address these and similar issues in a future release.

Per-Repository Configuration

Magit can be configured on a per-repository level using both Git variables as well as Emacs options.

To set a Git variable for one repository only, simply set it in /path/to/repo/.git/config instead of $HOME/.gitconfig or /etc/gitconfig. See man:git-config

Similarly, Emacs options can be set for one repository only by editing /path/to/repo/.dir-locals.el. See info:emacs#Directory Variables. For example to disable automatic refreshes of file-visiting buffers in just one huge repository use this:

• /path/to/huge/repo/.dir-locals.el

  ((nil . ((magit-refresh-buffers . nil))))
      

If you want to apply the same settings to several, but not all, repositories then keeping the repository-local config files in sync would quickly become annoying. To avoid that you can create config files for certain classes of repositories (e.g. “huge repositories”) and then include those files in the per-repository config files. For example:

• /path/to/huge/repo/.git/config

  [include]
          path = /path/to/huge-gitconfig
      

• /path/to/huge-gitconfig

  [status]
          showUntrackedFiles = no
      

• $HOME/.emacs.d/init.el

  (dir-locals-set-class-variables 'huge-git-repository
     '((nil . ((magit-refresh-buffers . nil)))))
  
  (dir-locals-set-directory-class
     "/path/to/huge/repo/" 'huge-git-repository)
      

Essential Settings

_

The next two sections list and discuss several variables that many users might want to customize, for safety and/or performance reasons.

Safety

This section discusses various variables that you might want to change (or not change) for safety reasons.

Git keeps committed changes around long enough for users to recover changes they have accidentally been deleted. It does not do the same for uncommitted changes in the working tree and not even the index (the staging area). Because Magit makes it so easy to modify uncommitted changes, it also makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot in the process. For that reason Magit provides three global modes that save tracked files to work-in-progress references after or before certain actions. See *Wip Modes.

These modes are not enabled by default because of performance concerns. Instead a lot of potentially destructive commands require confirmation every time they are used. In many cases this can be disabled by adding a symbol to magit-no-confirm (see <a href=”*Completion and Confirmation”>*Completion and Confirmation). If you enable the various wip modes then you should add safe-with-wip to this list.

Similarly it isn’t necessary to require confirmation before moving a file to the system trash - if you trashed a file by mistake then you can recover it from the there. Option magit-delete-by-moving-to-trash controls whether the system trash is used, which is the case by default. Nevertheless, trash isn’t a member of magit-no-confirm - you might want to change that.

By default buffers visiting files are automatically reverted when the visited file changes on disk. This isn’t as risky as it might seem, but to make an informed decision you should see <a href=”*Risk of Reverting Automatically”>*Risk of Reverting Automatically.

Performance

_

After Magit has run git for side-effects, it also refreshes the current Magit buffer and the respective status buffer. This is necessary because otherwise outdated information might be displayed without the user noticing. Magit buffers are updated by recreating their content from scratch, which makes updating simpler and less error-prone, but also more costly. Keeping it simple and just re-creating everything from scratch is an old design decision and departing from that will require major refactoring.

I plan to do that in time for the next major release. I also intend to create logs and diffs asynchronously, which should also help a lot but also requires major refactoring.

Meanwhile you can tell Magit to only automatically refresh the current Magit buffer, but not the status buffer. If you do that, then the status buffer is only refreshed automatically if it is the current buffer.

(setq magit-refresh-status-buffer nil)

You should also check whether any third-party packages have added anything to magit-refresh-buffer-hook, magit-status-refresh-hook, magit-pre-refresh-hook, and magit-post-refresh-hook. If so, then check whether those additions impact performance significantly. Setting magit-refresh-verbose and then inspecting the output in the *Messages* buffer, should help doing so.

Magit also reverts buffers for visited files located inside the current repository when the visited file changes on disk. That is implemented on top of auto-revert-mode from the built-in library autorevert. To figure out whether that impacts performance, check whether performance is significantly worse, when many buffers exist and/or when some buffers visit files using TRAMP. If so, then this should help.

(setq auto-revert-buffer-list-filter
      'magit-auto-revert-repository-buffers-p)

For alternative approaches see <a href=”*Automatic Reverting of File-Visiting Buffers”>*Automatic Reverting of File-Visiting Buffers.

If you have enabled any features that are disabled by default, then you should check whether they impact performance significantly. It’s likely that they were not enabled by default because it is known that they reduce performance at least in large repositories.

If performance is only slow inside certain unusually large repositories, then you might want to disable certain features on a per-repository or per-repository-class basis only. See *Per-Repository Configuration.

Log Performance

When showing logs, Magit limits the number of commits initially shown in the hope that this avoids unnecessary work. When using --graph is used, then this unfortunately does not have the desired effect for large histories. Junio, Git’s maintainer, said on the git mailing list (http://www.spinics.net/lists/git/msg232230.html): ”--graph wants to compute the whole history and the max-count only affects the output phase after --graph does its computation”.

In other words, it’s not that Git is slow at outputting the differences, or that Magit is slow at parsing the output - the problem is that Git first goes outside and has a smoke.

We actually work around this issue by limiting the number of commits not only by using -<N> but by also using a range. But unfortunately that’s not always possible.

In repositories with more than a few thousand commits --graph should never be a member of magit-log-section-arguments. That variable is used in the status buffer which is refreshed every time you run any Magit command.

Using --color --graph is even slower. Magit uses code that is part of Emacs to turn control characters into faces. That code is pretty slow and this is quite noticeable when showing a log with many branches and merges. For that reason --color is not enabled by default anymore. Consider leaving it at that.

Diff Performance

If diffs are slow, then consider turning off some optional diff features by setting all or some of the following variables to nil: magit-diff-highlight-indentation, magit-diff-highlight-trailing, magit-diff-paint-whitespace, magit-diff-highlight-hunk-body, and magit-diff-refine-hunk.

When showing a commit instead of some arbitrary diff, then some additional information is displayed. Calculating this information can be quite expensive given certain circumstances. If looking at a commit using magit-revision-mode takes considerably more time than looking at the same commit in magit-diff-mode, then consider setting magit-revision-insert-related-refs to nil.

Refs Buffer Performance

When refreshing the “references buffer” is slow, then that’s usually because several hundred refs are being displayed. The best way to address that is to display fewer refs, obviously.

If you are not, or only mildly, interested in seeing the list of tags, then start by not displaying them:

(remove-hook 'magit-refs-sections-hook 'magit-insert-tags)

Then you should also make sure that the listed remote branches actually all exist. You can do so by pruning branches which no longer exist using f-pa.

Committing Performance

When you initiate a commit, then Magit by default automatically shows a diff of the changes you are about to commit. For large commits this can take a long time, which is especially distracting when you are committing large amounts of generated data which you don’t actually intend to inspect before committing. This behavior can be turned off using:

(remove-hook 'server-switch-hook 'magit-commit-diff)

Then you can type C-c C-d to show the diff when you actually want to see it, but only then. Alternatively you can leave the hook alone and just type C-g in those cases when it takes too long to generate the diff. If you do that, then you will end up with a broken diff buffer, but doing it this way has the advantage that you usually get to see the diff, which is useful because it increases the odds that you spot potential issues.

The Built-In VC Package

Emacs comes with a version control interface called “VC”, see info:emacs#Version Control. It is enabled be default, and if you don’t use it in addition to Magit, then you should disable it to keep it from performing unnecessary work:

(setq vc-handled-backends nil)

You can also disable its use for Git but keep using it when using another version control system:

(setq vc-handled-backends (delq 'Git vc-handled-backends))

Microsoft Windows Performance

In order to update the status buffer, git has to be run a few dozen times. That is problematic on Microsoft Windows, because that operating system is exceptionally slow at starting processes. Sadly this is an issue that can only be fixed by Microsoft itself, and they don’t appear to be particularly interested in doing so.

Beside the subprocess issue, there are also other Windows-specific performance issues. Some of these have workarounds. The maintainers of “Git for Windows” try to improve performance on Windows. Always use the latest release in order to benefit from the latest performance tweaks. Magit too tries to work around some Windows-specific issues.

According to some sources, setting the following Git variables can also help.

git config --global core.preloadindex true   # default since v2.1
git config --global core.fscache true        # default since v2.8
git config --global gc.auto 256

You should also check whether an anti-virus program is affecting performance.

MacOS Performance

On macOS Emacs currently creates child processes using fork. It appears that this also copies GUI resources. The result is that forking takes about 30 times as long on Darwin than on Linux. And because Magit starts many git processes even when doing simple things, that makes quite a difference.

On the master branch Emacs now uses vfork when possible, like this was already done on Linux, and now child creation only takes about twice as long on Darwin. See [fn:mac1] for more information.

Nobody knows when the changes on the master branch will be released as 26.1, but it is still a long way off. You might want to get your hands on this change before then. The easiest way to get a patched Emacs is to install the emacs-plus formula [fn:mac2] using homebrew. The change has been backported, so you get it not only when using --HEAD, but also when using --devel or when installing the latest release (by not using a version argument).

Alternatively you can apply the backport [fn:mac3] manually.

[fn:mac1] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnu-emacs/2017-04/msg00201.html [fn:mac2] https://github.com/d12frosted/homebrew-emacs-plus [fn:mac3] https://gist.githubusercontent.com/aaronjensen/f45894ddf431ecbff78b1bcf533d3e6b/raw/6a5cd7f57341aba673234348d8b0d2e776f86719/Emacs-25-OS-X-use-vfork.patch

Plumbing

_

The following sections describe how to use several of Magit’s core abstractions to extend Magit itself or implement a separate extension.

A few of the low-level features used by Magit have been factored out into separate libraries/packages, so that they can be used by other packages, without having to depend on Magit. These libraries are described in separate manuals, see info:with-editor and info:magit-popup.

If you are trying to find an unused key that you can bind to a command provided by your own Magit extension, then checkout https://github.com/magit/magit/wiki/Plugin-Dispatch-Key-Registry.

Calling Git

_

Magit provides many specialized functions for calling Git. All of these functions are defined in either magit-git.el or magit-process.el and have one of the prefixes magit-run-, magit-call-, magit-start-, or magit-git- (which is also used for other things).

All of these functions accept an indefinite number of arguments, which are strings that specify command line arguments for Git (or in some cases an arbitrary executable). These arguments are flattened before being passed on to the executable; so instead of strings they can also be lists of strings and arguments that are nil are silently dropped. Some of these functions also require a single mandatory argument before these command line arguments.

Roughly speaking, these functions run Git either to get some value or for side-effects. The functions that return a value are useful to collect the information necessary to populate a Magit buffer, while the others are used to implement Magit commands.

The functions in the value-only group always run synchronously, and they never trigger a refresh. The function in the side-effect group can be further divided into subgroups depending on whether they run Git synchronously or asynchronously, and depending on whether they trigger a refresh when the executable has finished.

Getting a Value from Git

These functions run Git in order to get a value, an exit status, or output. Of course you could also use them to run Git commands that have side-effects, but that should be avoided.

• Function: magit-git-exit-code &rest args

  Executes git with ARGS and returns its exit code.

• Function: magit-git-success &rest args

  Executes git with ARGS and returns t if the exit code is 0, nil otherwise.

• Function: magit-git-failure &rest args

  Executes git with ARGS and returns t if the exit code is 1, nil otherwise.

• Function: magit-git-true &rest args

  Executes git with ARGS and returns t if the first line printed by git is the string “true”, nil otherwise.

• Function: magit-git-false &rest args

  Executes git with ARGS and returns t if the first line printed by git is the string “false”, nil otherwise.

• Function: magit-git-insert &rest args

  Executes git with ARGS and inserts its output at point.

• Function: magit-git-string &rest args

  Executes git with ARGS and returns the first line of its output. If there is no output or if it begins with a newline character, then this returns nil.

• Function: magit-git-lines &rest args

  Executes git with ARGS and returns its output as a list of lines. Empty lines anywhere in the output are omitted.

• Function: magit-git-items &rest args

  Executes git with ARGS and returns its null-separated output as a list. Empty items anywhere in the output are omitted.

  If the value of option magit-git-debug is non-nil and git exits with a non-zero exit status, then warn about that in the echo area and add a section containing git’s standard error in the current repository’s process buffer.

If an error occurs when using one of the above functions, then that is usually due to a bug, i.e. using an argument which is not actually supported. Such errors are usually not reported, but when they occur we need to be able to debug them.

• User Option: magit-git-debug

  Whether to report errors that occur when using magit-git-insert, magit-git-string, magit-git-lines, or magit-git-items. This does not actually raise an error. Instead a message is shown in the echo area, and git’s standard error is insert into a new section in the current repository’s process buffer.

• Function: magit-git-str &rest args

  This is a variant of magit-git-string that ignores the option magit-git-debug. It is mainly intended to be used while handling errors in functions that do respect that option. Using such a function while handing an error could cause yet another error and therefore lead to an infinite recursion. You probably won’t ever need to use this function.

Calling Git for Effect

These functions are used to run git to produce some effect. Most Magit commands that actually run git do so by using such a function.

Because we do not need to consume git’s output when using these functions, their output is instead logged into a per-repository buffer, which can be shown using $ from a Magit buffer or M-x magit-process elsewhere.

These functions can have an effect in two distinct ways. Firstly, running git may change something, i.e. create or push a new commit. Secondly, that change may require that Magit buffers are refreshed to reflect the changed state of the repository. But refreshing isn’t always desirable, so only some of these functions do perform such a refresh after git has returned.

Sometimes it is useful to run git asynchronously. For example, when the user has just initiated a push, then there is no reason to make her wait until that has completed. In other cases it makes sense to wait for git to complete before letting the user do something else. For example after staging a change it is useful to wait until after the refresh because that also automatically moves to the next change.

• Function: magit-call-git &rest args

  Calls git synchronously with ARGS.

• Function: magit-call-process program &rest args

  Calls PROGRAM synchronously with ARGS.

• Function: magit-run-git &rest args

  Calls git synchronously with ARGS and then refreshes.

• Function: magit-run-git-with-input input &rest args

  Calls git synchronously with ARGS and sends it INPUT on standard input.

  INPUT should be a buffer or the name of an existing buffer. The content of that buffer is used as the process’ standard input. After the process returns a refresh is performed.

  As a special case, INPUT may also be nil. In that case the content of the current buffer is used as standard input and no refresh is performed.

  This function actually runs git asynchronously. But then it waits for the process to return, so the function itself is synchronous.

• Function: magit-run-git-with-logfile file &rest args

  Calls git synchronously with ARGS. The process’ output is saved in FILE. This is rarely useful and so this function might be removed in the future.

  This function actually runs git asynchronously. But then it waits for the process to return, so the function itself is synchronous.

• Function: magit-git &rest args

  Calls git synchronously with ARGS for side-effects only. This function does not refresh the buffer.

• Function: magit-git-wash washer &rest args

  Execute Git with ARGS, inserting washed output at point. Actually first insert the raw output at point. If there is no output call magit-cancel-section. Otherwise temporarily narrow the buffer to the inserted text, move to its beginning, and then call function WASHER with ARGS as its sole argument.

And now for the asynchronous variants.

• Function: magit-run-git-async &rest args

  Start Git, prepare for refresh, and return the process object. ARGS is flattened and then used as arguments to Git.

  Display the command line arguments in the echo area.

  After Git returns some buffers are refreshed: the buffer that was current when this function was called (if it is a Magit buffer and still alive), as well as the respective Magit status buffer. Unmodified buffers visiting files that are tracked in the current repository are reverted if magit-revert-buffers is non-nil.

• Function: magit-run-git-with-editor &rest args

  Export GIT_EDITOR and start Git. Also prepare for refresh and return the process object. ARGS is flattened and then used as arguments to Git.

  Display the command line arguments in the echo area.

  After Git returns some buffers are refreshed: the buffer that was current when this function was called (if it is a Magit buffer and still alive), as well as the respective Magit status buffer.

• Function: magit-start-git &rest args

  Start Git, prepare for refresh, and return the process object.

  If INPUT is non-nil, it has to be a buffer or the name of an existing buffer. The buffer content becomes the processes standard input.

  Option magit-git-executable specifies the Git executable and option magit-git-global-arguments specifies constant arguments. The remaining arguments ARGS specify arguments to Git. They are flattened before use.

  After Git returns, some buffers are refreshed: the buffer that was current when this function was called (if it is a Magit buffer and still alive), as well as the respective Magit status buffer. Unmodified buffers visiting files that are tracked in the current repository are reverted if magit-revert-buffers is non-nil.

• Function: magit-start-process &rest args

  Start PROGRAM, prepare for refresh, and return the process object.

  If optional argument INPUT is non-nil, it has to be a buffer or the name of an existing buffer. The buffer content becomes the processes standard input.

  The process is started using start-file-process and then setup to use the sentinel magit-process-sentinel and the filter magit-process-filter. Information required by these functions is stored in the process object. When this function returns the process has not started to run yet so it is possible to override the sentinel and filter.

  After the process returns, magit-process-sentinel refreshes the buffer that was current when magit-start-process was called (if it is a Magit buffer and still alive), as well as the respective Magit status buffer. Unmodified buffers visiting files that are tracked in the current repository are reverted if magit-revert-buffers is non-nil.

• Variable: magit-this-process

  The child process which is about to start. This can be used to change the filter and sentinel.

• Variable: magit-process-raise-error

  When this is non-nil, then magit-process-sentinel raises an error if git exits with a non-zero exit status. For debugging purposes.

Section Plumbing

Creating Sections

• Macro: magit-insert-section &rest args

  Insert a section at point.

  TYPE is the section type, a symbol. Many commands that act on the current section behave differently depending on that type. Also if a variable magit-TYPE-section-map exists, then use that as the text-property keymap of all text belonging to the section (but this may be overwritten in subsections). TYPE can also have the form (eval FORM) in which case FORM is evaluated at runtime.

  Optional VALUE is the value of the section, usually a string that is required when acting on the section.

  When optional HIDE is non-nil collapse the section body by default, i.e. when first creating the section, but not when refreshing the buffer. Otherwise, expand it by default. This can be overwritten using magit-section-set-visibility-hook. When a section is recreated during a refresh, then the visibility of predecessor is inherited and HIDE is ignored (but the hook is still honored).

  BODY is any number of forms that actually insert the section’s heading and body. Optional NAME, if specified, has to be a symbol, which is then bound to the struct of the section being inserted.

  Before BODY is evaluated the start of the section object is set to the value of point and after BODY was evaluated its end is set to the new value of point; BODY is responsible for moving point forward.

  If it turns out inside BODY that the section is empty, then magit-cancel-section can be used to abort and remove all traces of the partially inserted section. This can happen when creating a section by washing Git’s output and Git didn’t actually output anything this time around.

• Function: magit-insert-heading &rest args

  Insert the heading for the section currently being inserted.

  This function should only be used inside magit-insert-section.

  When called without any arguments, then just set the content slot of the object representing the section being inserted to a marker at point. The section should only contain a single line when this function is used like this.

  When called with arguments ARGS, which have to be strings, then insert those strings at point. The section should not contain any text before this happens and afterwards it should again only contain a single line. If the face property is set anywhere inside any of these strings, then insert all of them unchanged. Otherwise use the magit-section-heading face for all inserted text.

  The content property of the section struct is the end of the heading (which lasts from start to content) and the beginning of the body (which lasts from content to end). If the value of content is nil, then the section has no heading and its body cannot be collapsed. If a section does have a heading then its height must be exactly one line, including a trailing newline character. This isn’t enforced; you are responsible for getting it right. The only exception is that this function does insert a newline character if necessary.

• Function: magit-cancel-section

  Cancel the section currently being inserted. This exits the innermost call to magit-insert-section and removes all traces of what has already happened inside that call.

• Function: magit-define-section-jumper sym title &optional value

  Define an interactive function to go to section SYM. TITLE is the displayed title of the section.

Section Selection

• Function: magit-current-section

  Return the section at point.

• Function: magit-region-sections

  Return a list of the selected sections.

  When the region is active and constitutes a valid section selection, then return a list of all selected sections. This is the case when the region begins in the heading of a section and ends in the heading of a sibling of that first section. When the selection is not valid then return nil. Most commands that can act on the selected sections, then instead just act on the current section, the one point is in.

  When the region looks like it would in any other buffer then the selection is invalid. When the selection is valid then the region uses the magit-section-highlight. This does not apply to diffs where things get a bit more complicated, but even here if the region looks like it usually does, then that’s not a valid selection as far as this function is concerned.

• Function: magit-region-values &rest types

  Return a list of the values of the selected sections.

  Also see magit-region-sections whose doc-string explains when a region is a valid section selection. If the region is not active or is not a valid section selection, then return nil. If optional TYPES is non-nil then the selection not only has to be valid; the types of all selected sections additionally have to match one of TYPES, or nil is returned.

Matching Sections

• Key: M-x magit-describe-section-briefly, magit-describe-section-briefly

  Show information about the section at point. This command is intended for debugging purposes.

• Function: magit-section-ident

  Return an unique identifier for SECTION. The return value has the form ((TYPE . VALUE)...).

• Function: magit-get-section

  Return the section identified by IDENT. IDENT has to be a list as returned by magit-section-ident.

• Function: magit-section-match condition &optional section

  Return t if SECTION matches CONDITION. SECTION defaults to the section at point. If SECTION is not specified and there also is no section at point, then return nil.

  CONDITION can take the following forms:

  • (CONDITION...)

    matches if any of the CONDITIONs matches.

  • [TYPE...]

    matches if the first TYPE matches the type of the section, the second matches that of its parent, and so on.

  • [* TYPE...]

    matches sections that match [TYPE…] and also recursively all their child sections.

  • TYPE

    matches sections of TYPE regardless of the types of the parent sections.

  Each TYPE is a symbol. Note that it is not necessary to specify all TYPEs up to the root section as printed by magit-describe-type, unless of course you want to be that precise.

• Function: magit-section-when condition &rest body

  If the section at point matches CONDITION evaluate BODY.

  If the section matches, then evaluate BODY forms sequentially with it bound to the section and return the value of the last form. If there are no BODY forms, then return the value of the section. If the section does not match or if there is no section at point then return nil.

  See magit-section-match for the forms CONDITION can take.

• Function: magit-section-case &rest clauses

  Choose among clauses on the type of the section at point.

  Each clause looks like (CONDITION BODY…). The type of the section is compared against each CONDITION; the BODY forms of the first match are evaluated sequentially and the value of the last form is returned. Inside BODY the symbol it is bound to the section at point. If no clause succeeds or if there is no section at point return nil.

  See magit-section-match for the forms CONDITION can take. Additionally a CONDITION of t is allowed in the final clause and matches if no other CONDITION match, even if there is no section at point.

• Variable: magit-root-section

  The root section in the current buffer. All other sections are descendants of this section. The value of this variable is set by magit-insert-section and you should never modify it.

For diff related sections a few additional tools exist.

• Function: magit-diff-type &optional section

  Return the diff type of SECTION.

  The returned type is one of the symbols staged, unstaged, committed, or undefined. This type serves a similar purpose as the general type common to all sections (which is stored in the type slot of the corresponding magit-section struct) but takes additional information into account. When the SECTION isn’t related to diffs and the buffer containing it also isn’t a diff-only buffer, then return nil.

  Currently the type can also be one of tracked and untracked, but these values are not handled explicitly in every place they should be. A possible fix could be to just return nil here.

  The section has to be a diff or hunk section, or a section whose children are of type diff. If optional SECTION is nil, return the diff type for the current section. In buffers whose major mode is magit-diff-mode SECTION is ignored and the type is determined using other means. In magit-revision-mode buffers the type is always committed.

• Function: magit-diff-scope &optional section strict

  Return the diff scope of SECTION or the selected section(s).

  A diff’s “scope” describes what part of a diff is selected, it is a symbol, one of region, hunk, hunks, file, files, or list. Do not confuse this with the diff “type”, as returned by magit-diff-type.

  If optional SECTION is non-nil, then return the scope of that, ignoring the sections selected by the region. Otherwise return the scope of the current section, or if the region is active and selects a valid group of diff related sections, the type of these sections, i.e. hunks or files. If SECTION (or if the current section that is nil) is a hunk section and the region starts and ends inside the body of a that section, then the type is region.

  If optional STRICT is non-nil then return nil if the diff type of the section at point is untracked or the section at point is not actually a diff but a diffstat section.

Refreshing Buffers

All commands that create a new Magit buffer or change what is being displayed in an existing buffer do so by calling magit-mode-setup. Among other things, that function sets the buffer local values of default-directory (to the top-level of the repository), magit-refresh-function, and magit-refresh-args.

Buffers are refreshed by calling the function that is the local value of magit-refresh-function (a function named magit-*-refresh-buffer, where * may be something like diff) with the value of magit-refresh-args as arguments.

• Macro: magit-mode-setup buffer switch-func mode refresh-func &optional refresh-args

  This function displays and selects BUFFER, turns on MODE, and refreshes a first time.

  This function displays and optionally selects BUFFER by calling magit-mode-display-buffer with BUFFER, MODE and SWITCH-FUNC as arguments. Then it sets the local value of magit-refresh-function to REFRESH-FUNC and that of magit-refresh-args to REFRESH-ARGS. Finally it creates the buffer content by calling REFRESH-FUNC with REFRESH-ARGS as arguments.

  All arguments are evaluated before switching to BUFFER.

• Function: magit-mode-display-buffer buffer mode &optional switch-function

  This function display BUFFER in some window and select it. BUFFER may be a buffer or a string, the name of a buffer. The buffer is returned.

  Unless BUFFER is already displayed in the selected frame, store the previous window configuration as a buffer local value, so that it can later be restored by magit-mode-bury-buffer.

  The buffer is displayed and selected using SWITCH-FUNCTION. If that is nil then pop-to-buffer is used if the current buffer’s major mode derives from magit-mode. Otherwise switch-to-buffer is used.

• Variable: magit-refresh-function

  The value of this buffer-local variable is the function used to refresh the current buffer. It is called with magit-refresh-args as arguments.

• Variable: magit-refresh-args

  The list of arguments used by magit-refresh-function to refresh the current buffer. magit-refresh-function is called with these arguments.

  The value is usually set using magit-mode-setup, but in some cases it’s also useful to provide commands which can change the value. For example, the magit-diff-refresh-popup can be used to change any of the arguments used to display the diff, without having to specify again which differences should be shown. magit-diff-more-context, magit-diff-less-context, and magit-diff-default-context change just the -U<N> argument. In both case this is done by changing the value of this variable and then calling this magit-refresh-function.

Conventions

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Also see *Completion and Confirmation.

Theming Faces

The default theme uses blue for local branches, green for remote branches, and goldenrod (brownish yellow) for tags. When creating a new theme, you should probably follow that example. If your theme already uses other colors, then stick to that.

In older releases these reference faces used to have a background color and a box around them. The basic default faces no longer do so, to make Magit buffers much less noisy, and you should follow that example at least with regards to boxes. (Boxes were used in the past to work around a conflict between the highlighting overlay and text property backgrounds. That’s no longer necessary because highlighting no longer causes other background colors to disappear.) Alternatively you can keep the background color and/or box, but then have to take special care to adjust magit-branch-current accordingly. By default it looks mostly like magit-branch-local, but with a box (by default the former is the only face that uses a box, exactly so that it sticks out). If the former also uses a box, then you have to make sure that it differs in some other way from the latter.

The most difficult faces to theme are those related to diffs, headings, highlighting, and the region. There are faces that fall into all four groups - expect to spend some time getting this right.

The region face in the default theme, in both the light and dark variants, as well as in many other themes, distributed with Emacs or by third-parties, is very ugly. It is common to use a background color that really sticks out, which is ugly but if that were the only problem then it would be acceptable. Unfortunately many themes also set the foreground color, which ensures that all text within the region is readable. Without doing that there might be cases where some foreground color is too close to the region background color to still be readable. But it also means that text within the region loses all syntax highlighting.

I consider the work that went into getting the region face right to be a good indicator for the general quality of a theme. My recommendation for the region face is this: use a background color slightly different from the background color of the default face, and do not set the foreground color at all. So for a light theme you might use a light (possibly tinted) gray as the background color of default and a somewhat darker gray for the background of region. That should usually be enough to not collide with the foreground color of any other face. But if some other faces also set a light gray as background color, then you should also make sure it doesn’t collide with those (in some cases it might be acceptable though).

Magit only uses the region face when the region is “invalid” by its own definition. In a Magit buffer the region is used to either select multiple sibling sections, so that commands which support it act on all of these sections instead of just the current section, or to select lines within a single hunk section. In all other cases, the section is considered invalid and Magit won’t act on it. But such invalid sections happen, either because the user has not moved point enough yet to make it valid or because she wants to use a non-magit command to act on the region, e.g. kill-region.

So using the regular region face for invalid sections is a feature. It tells the user that Magit won’t be able to act on it. It’s acceptable if that face looks a bit odd and even (but less so) if it collides with the background colors of section headings and other things that have a background color.

Magit highlights the current section. If a section has subsections, then all of them are highlighted. This is done using faces that have “highlight” in their names. For most sections, magit-section-highlight is used for both the body and the heading. Like the region face, it should only set the background color to something similar to that of default. The highlight background color must be different from both the region background color and the default background color.

For diff related sections Magit uses various faces to highlight different parts of the selected section(s). Note that hunk headings, unlike all other section headings, by default have a background color, because it is useful to have very visible separators between hunks. That face magit-diff-hunk-heading, should be different from both magit-diff-hunk-heading-highlight and magit-section-highlight, as well as from magit-diff-context and magit-diff-context-highlight. By default we do that by changing the foreground color. Changing the background color would lead to complications, and there are already enough we cannot get around. (Also note that it is generally a good idea for section headings to always be bold, but only for sections that have subsections).

When there is a valid region selecting diff-related sibling sections, i.e. multiple files or hunks, then the bodies of all these sections use the respective highlight faces, but additionally the headings instead use one of the faces magit-diff-file-heading-selection or magit-diff-hunk-heading-selection. These faces have to be different from the regular highlight variants to provide explicit visual indication that the region is active.

When theming diff related faces, start by setting the option magit-diff-refine-hunk to all. You might personally prefer to only refine the current hunk or not use hunk refinement at all, but some of the users of your theme want all hunks to be refined, so you have to cater to that.

(Also turn on magit-diff-highlight-indentation, magit-diff-highlight-trailing, and magit-diff-paint-whitespace; and insert some whitespace errors into the code you use for testing.)

For e.g. “added lines” you have to adjust three faces: magit-diff-added, magit-diff-added-highlight, and smerge-refined-added. Make sure that the latter works well with both of the former, as well as smerge-other and diff-added. Then do the same for the removed lines, context lines, lines added by us, and lines added by them. Also make sure the respective added, removed, and context faces use approximately the same saturation for both the highlighted and unhighlighted variants. Also make sure the file and diff headings work nicely with context lines (e.g. make them look different). Line faces should set both the foreground and the background color. For example, for added lines use two different greens.

It’s best if the foreground color of both the highlighted and the unhighlighted variants are the same, so you will need to have to find a color that works well on the highlight and unhighlighted background, the refine background, and the highlight context background. When there is an hunk internal region, then the added- and removed-lines background color is used only within that region. Outside the region the highlighted context background color is used. This makes it easier to see what is being staged. With an hunk internal region the hunk heading is shown using magit-diff-hunk-heading-selection, and so are the thin lines that are added around the lines that fall within the region. The background color of that has to be distinct enough from the various other involved background colors.

Nobody said this would be easy. If your theme restricts itself to a certain set of colors, then you should make an exception here. Otherwise it would be impossible to make the diffs look good in each and every variation. Actually you might want to just stick to the default definitions for these faces. You have been warned. Also please note that if you do not get this right, this will in some cases look to users like bugs in Magit - so please do it right or not at all.

FAQ

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The next two nodes lists frequently asked questions. For a list of frequently and recently asked questions, i.e. questions that haven’t made it into the manual yet, see https://github.com/magit/magit/wiki/FAQ.

Please also use the *Debugging Tools.

FAQ - How to …?

How to show git’s output?

To show the output of recently run git commands, press $ (or, if that isn’t available, M-x magit-process-buffer). This will show a buffer containing a section per git invocation; as always press TAB to expand or collapse them.

By default, git’s output is only inserted into the process buffer if it is run for side-effects. When the output is consumed in some way, also inserting it into the process buffer would be too expensive. For debugging purposes, it’s possible to do so anyway by setting magit-git-debug to t.

How to install the gitman info manual?

Git’s manpages can be exported as an info manual called gitman. Magit’s own info manual links to nodes in that manual instead of the actual manpages because Info doesn’t support linking to manpages.

Unfortunately some distributions do not install the gitman manual by default and you will have to install a separate documentation package to get it.

Magit patches Info adding the ability to visit links to the gitman Info manual by instead viewing the respective manpage. If you prefer that approach, then set the value of magit-view-git-manual-method to one of the supported packages man or woman, e.g.:

(setq magit-view-git-manual-method 'man)

How to show diffs for gpg-encrypted files?

Git supports showing diffs for encrypted files, but has to be told to do so. Since Magit just uses Git to get the diffs, configuring Git also affects the diffs displayed inside Magit.

git config --global diff.gpg.textconv "gpg --no-tty --decrypt"
echo "*.gpg filter=gpg diff=gpg" > .gitattributes

How does branching and pushing work?

Please see *Branching and http://emacsair.me/2016/01/17/magit-2.4

Can Magit be used as ediff-version-control-package?

No, it cannot. For that to work the functions ediff-magit-internal and ediff-magit-merge-internal would have to be implemented, and they are not. These two functions are only used by the three commands ediff-revision, ediff-merge-revisions-with-ancestor, and ediff-merge-revisions.

These commands only delegate the task of populating buffers with certain revisions to the “internal” functions. The equally important task of determining which revisions are to be compared/merged is not delegated. Instead this is done without any support whatsoever from the version control package/system - meaning that the user has to enter the revisions explicitly. Instead of implementing ediff-magit-internal we provide magit-ediff-compare, which handles both tasks like it is 2005.

The other commands ediff-merge-revisions and ediff-merge-revisions-with-ancestor are normally not what you want when using a modern version control system like Git. Instead of letting the user resolve only those conflicts which Git could not resolve on its own, they throw away all work done by Git and then expect the user to manually merge all conflicts, including those that had already been resolved. That made sense back in the days when version control systems couldn’t merge (or so I have been told), but not anymore. Once in a blue moon you might actually want to see all conflicts, in which case you can use these commands, which then use ediff-vc-merge-internal. So we don’t actually have to implement ediff-magit-merge-internal. Instead we provide the more useful command magit-ediff-resolve which only shows yet-to-be resolved conflicts.

FAQ - Issues and Errors

Magit is slow

See *Performance.

I changed several thousand files at once and now Magit is unusable

Magit is currently not expected to work under such conditions. It sure would be nice if it did, and v2.5 will hopefully be a big step into that direction. But it might take until v3.1 to accomplish fully satisfactory performance, because that requires some heavy refactoring.

But for now we recommend you use the command line to complete this one commit. Also see *Performance.

I am having problems committing

That likely means that Magit is having problems finding an appropriate emacsclient executable. See info:with-editor#Configuring With-Editor and info:with-editor#Debugging.

I am using MS Windows and cannot push with Magit

It’s almost certain that Magit is only incidental to this issue. It is much more likely that this is a configuration issue, even if you can push on the command line.

Detailed setup instructions can be found at https://github.com/magit/magit/wiki/Pushing-with-Magit-from-Windows.

I am using OS X and SOMETHING works in shell, but not in Magit

This usually occurs because Emacs doesn’t have the same environment variables as your shell. Try installing and configuring https://github.com/purcell/exec-path-from-shell. By default it synchronizes $PATH, which helps Magit find the same git as the one you are using on the shell.

If SOMETHING is “passphrase caching with gpg-agent for commit and/or tag signing”, then you’ll also need to synchronize $GPG_AGENT_INFO.

Diffs contain control sequences

This happens when you configure Git to always color diffs and/or all of its output. The valid values for relevant Git variables color.ui and color.diff are false, true and always, and the default is true. You should leave it that because then you get colorful output in terminals but git’s output is consumed by something else, then no colors are used.

If you actually use some other tool which expects that requires that you force git to output control sequences (which is highly unlikely), then you can override these settings just for Magit by using:

(setq magit-git-global-arguments
      (nconc magit-git-global-arguments
             '("-c" "color.ui=false"
               "-c" "color.diff=false")))

Expanding a file to show the diff causes it to disappear

This is probably caused by a change of a diff.* Git variable. You probably set that variable for a reason, and should therefore only undo that setting in Magit by customizing magit-git-global-arguments.

Point is wrong in the COMMIT_EDITMSG buffer

Neither Magit nor `git-commit` fiddle with point in the buffer used to write commit messages, so something else must be doing it.

You have probably globally enabled a mode which does restore point in file-visiting buffers. It might be a bit surprising, but when you write a commit message, then you are actually editing a file.

So you have to figure out which package is doing. saveplace, pointback, and session are likely candidates. These snippets might help:

 (setq session-name-disable-regexp "\\(?:\\`'\\.git/[A-Z_]+\\'\\)")

 (with-eval-after-load 'pointback
   (lambda ()
     (when (or git-commit-mode git-rebase-mode)
	(pointback-mode -1))))

The mode-line information isn’t always up-to-date

Magit is not responsible for the version control information that is being displayed in the mode-line and looks something like Git-master. The built-in “Version Control” package, also known as “VC”, updates that information, and can be told to do so more often:

(setq auto-revert-check-vc-info t)

But doing so isn’t good for performance. For more (overly optimistic) information see info:emacs#VC Mode Line.

If you don’t really care about seeing that information in the mode-line, but just don’t want to see incorrect information, then consider disabling VC when using Git:

(setq vc-handled-backends (delq 'Git vc-handled-backends))

Or to disable it completely:

(setq vc-handled-backends nil)

A branch and tag sharing the same name breaks SOMETHING

Or more generally, ambiguous refnames break SOMETHING.

Magit assumes that refs are named non-ambiguously across the “refs/heads/”, “refs/tags/”, and “refs/remotes/” namespaces (i.e., all the names remain unique when those prefixes are stripped). We consider ambiguous refnames unsupported and recommend that you use a non-ambiguous naming scheme. However, if you do work with a repository that has ambiguous refnames, please report any issues you encounter so that we can investigate whether there is a simple fix.

My Git hooks work on the command-line but not inside Magit

When Magit calls git it adds a few global arguments including --literal-pathspecs and the git process started by Magit then passes that setting on to other git process it starts itself. It does so by setting the environment variable GIT_LITERAL_PATHSPECS, not by calling subprocesses with the --literal-pathspecs. You can therefore override this setting in hook scripts using unset GIT_LITERAL_PATHSPECS.

git-commit-mode isn’t used when committing from the command-line

The reason for this is that git-commit.el has not been loaded yet and/or that the server has not been started yet. These things have always already been taken care of when you commit from Magit because in order to do so, Magit has to be loaded and doing that involves loading git-commit and starting the server.

If you want to commit from the command-line, then you have to take care of these things yourself. Your init.el file should contain:

(require 'git-commit)
(server-mode)

Instead of `(require ‘git-commit)` you may also use:

(load "/path/to/magit-autoloads.el")

You might want to do that because loading git-commit causes large parts of Magit to be loaded.

There are also some variations of (server-mode) that you might want to try. Personally I use:

(use-package server
  :config (or (server-running-p) (server-mode)))

Now you can use:

$ emacs&
$ EDITOR=emacsclient git commit

However you cannot use:

$ killall emacs
$ EDITOR="emacsclient --alternate-editor emacs" git commit

This will actually end up using emacs, not emacsclient. If you do this, then can still edit the commit message but git-commit-mode won’t be used and you have to exit emacs to finish the process.

Tautology ahead. If you want to be able to use emacsclient to connect to a running emacs instance, even though no emacs instance is running, then you cannot use emacsclient directly.

Instead you have to create a script that does something like this:

Try to use emacsclient (without using --alternate-editor). If that succeeds, do nothing else. Otherwise start emacs & (and init.el must call server-start) and try to use emacsclient again.

Point ends up inside invisible text when jumping to a file-visiting buffer

This can happen when you type RET on a hunk to visit the respective file at the respective position. One solution to this problem is to use global-reveal-mode. It makes sure that text around point is always visible. If that is too drastic for your taste, then you may instead use magit-diff-visit-file-hook to reveal the text, possibly using reveal-post-command or for Org buffers org-reveal.

Debugging Tools

Magit and its dependencies provide a few debugging tools, and we appreciate it very much if you use those tools before reporting an issue. Please include all relevant output when reporting an issue.

• Key: M-x magit-version, magit-version

  This command shows the currently used versions of Magit, Git, and Emacs in the echo area. Non-interactively this just returns the Magit version.

• Key: M-x magit-emacs-Q-command, magit-emacs-Q-command

  This command shows a debugging shell command in the echo area and adds it to the kill ring. Paste that command into a shell an run it.

  This shell command starts emacs with only magit and its dependencies loaded. Neither your configuration nor other installed packages are loaded. This makes it easier to determine whether some issue lays with Magit or something else.

  If you run Magit from its Git repository, then you should be able to use make emacs-Q instead of the output of this command.

• Key: M-x magit-debug-git-executable, magit-debug-git-executable

  This command displays a buffer containing information about the available and used git executable(s), and can be useful when investigating exec-path issues.

  Also see *Git Executable.

• Key: M-x with-editor-debug, with-editor-debug

  This command displays a buffer containing information about the available and used git executable(s), and can be useful when investigating why Magit (or rather with-editor) cannot find an appropriate emacsclient executable.

  Also see info:with-editor#Debugging.

Please also see the *FAQ.

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Copyright (C) 2015-2018 Jonas Bernoulli <jonas@bernoul.li>

You can redistribute this document and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This document is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

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