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NAME

       git-update-index - Register file contents in the working tree to the index

SYNOPSIS

       git update-index
                    [--add] [--remove | --force-remove] [--replace]
                    [--refresh] [-q] [--unmerged] [--ignore-missing]
                    [(--cacheinfo <mode>,<object>,<file>)...]
                    [--chmod=(+|-)x]
                    [--[no-]assume-unchanged]
                    [--[no-]skip-worktree]
                    [--[no-]fsmonitor-valid]
                    [--ignore-submodules]
                    [--[no-]split-index]
                    [--[no-|test-|force-]untracked-cache]
                    [--[no-]fsmonitor]
                    [--really-refresh] [--unresolve] [--again | -g]
                    [--info-only] [--index-info]
                    [-z] [--stdin] [--index-version <n>]
                    [--verbose]
                    [--] [<file>...]

DESCRIPTION

       Modifies the index or directory cache. Each file mentioned is updated into the index and
       any unmerged or needs updating state is cleared.

       See also git-add(1) for a more user-friendly way to do some of the most common operations
       on the index.

       The way git update-index handles files it is told about can be modified using the various
       options:

OPTIONS

       --add
           If a specified file isn’t in the index already then it’s added. Default behaviour is
           to ignore new files.

       --remove
           If a specified file is in the index but is missing then it’s removed. Default behavior
           is to ignore removed file.

       --refresh
           Looks at the current index and checks to see if merges or updates are needed by
           checking stat() information.

       -q
           Quiet. If --refresh finds that the index needs an update, the default behavior is to
           error out. This option makes git update-index continue anyway.

       --ignore-submodules
           Do not try to update submodules. This option is only respected when passed before
           --refresh.

       --unmerged
           If --refresh finds unmerged changes in the index, the default behavior is to error
           out. This option makes git update-index continue anyway.

       --ignore-missing
           Ignores missing files during a --refresh

       --cacheinfo <mode>,<object>,<path>, --cacheinfo <mode> <object> <path>
           Directly insert the specified info into the index. For backward compatibility, you can
           also give these three arguments as three separate parameters, but new users are
           encouraged to use a single-parameter form.

       --index-info
           Read index information from stdin.

       --chmod=(+|-)x
           Set the execute permissions on the updated files.

       --[no-]assume-unchanged
           When this flag is specified, the object names recorded for the paths are not updated.
           Instead, this option sets/unsets the "assume unchanged" bit for the paths. When the
           "assume unchanged" bit is on, the user promises not to change the file and allows Git
           to assume that the working tree file matches what is recorded in the index. If you
           want to change the working tree file, you need to unset the bit to tell Git. This is
           sometimes helpful when working with a big project on a filesystem that has very slow
           lstat(2) system call (e.g. cifs).

           Git will fail (gracefully) in case it needs to modify this file in the index e.g. when
           merging in a commit; thus, in case the assumed-untracked file is changed upstream, you
           will need to handle the situation manually.

       --really-refresh
           Like --refresh, but checks stat information unconditionally, without regard to the
           "assume unchanged" setting.

       --[no-]skip-worktree
           When one of these flags is specified, the object name recorded for the paths are not
           updated. Instead, these options set and unset the "skip-worktree" bit for the paths.
           See section "Skip-worktree bit" below for more information.

       --[no-]fsmonitor-valid
           When one of these flags is specified, the object name recorded for the paths are not
           updated. Instead, these options set and unset the "fsmonitor valid" bit for the paths.
           See section "File System Monitor" below for more information.

       -g, --again
           Runs git update-index itself on the paths whose index entries are different from those
           from the HEAD commit.

       --unresolve
           Restores the unmerged or needs updating state of a file during a merge if it was
           cleared by accident.

       --info-only
           Do not create objects in the object database for all <file> arguments that follow this
           flag; just insert their object IDs into the index.

       --force-remove
           Remove the file from the index even when the working directory still has such a file.
           (Implies --remove.)

       --replace
           By default, when a file path exists in the index, git update-index refuses an attempt
           to add path/file. Similarly if a file path/file exists, a file path cannot be added.
           With --replace flag, existing entries that conflict with the entry being added are
           automatically removed with warning messages.

       --stdin
           Instead of taking list of paths from the command line, read list of paths from the
           standard input. Paths are separated by LF (i.e. one path per line) by default.

       --verbose
           Report what is being added and removed from index.

       --index-version <n>
           Write the resulting index out in the named on-disk format version. Supported versions
           are 2, 3 and 4. The current default version is 2 or 3, depending on whether extra
           features are used, such as git add -N.

           Version 4 performs a simple pathname compression that reduces index size by 30%-50% on
           large repositories, which results in faster load time. Version 4 is relatively young
           (first released in 1.8.0 in October 2012). Other Git implementations such as JGit and
           libgit2 may not support it yet.

       -z
           Only meaningful with --stdin or --index-info; paths are separated with NUL character
           instead of LF.

       --split-index, --no-split-index
           Enable or disable split index mode. If split-index mode is already enabled and
           --split-index is given again, all changes in $GIT_DIR/index are pushed back to the
           shared index file.

           These options take effect whatever the value of the core.splitIndex configuration
           variable (see git-config(1)). But a warning is emitted when the change goes against
           the configured value, as the configured value will take effect next time the index is
           read and this will remove the intended effect of the option.

       --untracked-cache, --no-untracked-cache
           Enable or disable untracked cache feature. Please use --test-untracked-cache before
           enabling it.

           These options take effect whatever the value of the core.untrackedCache configuration
           variable (see git-config(1)). But a warning is emitted when the change goes against
           the configured value, as the configured value will take effect next time the index is
           read and this will remove the intended effect of the option.

       --test-untracked-cache
           Only perform tests on the working directory to make sure untracked cache can be used.
           You have to manually enable untracked cache using --untracked-cache or
           --force-untracked-cache or the core.untrackedCache configuration variable afterwards
           if you really want to use it. If a test fails the exit code is 1 and a message
           explains what is not working as needed, otherwise the exit code is 0 and OK is
           printed.

       --force-untracked-cache
           Same as --untracked-cache. Provided for backwards compatibility with older versions of
           Git where --untracked-cache used to imply --test-untracked-cache but this option would
           enable the extension unconditionally.

       --fsmonitor, --no-fsmonitor
           Enable or disable files system monitor feature. These options take effect whatever the
           value of the core.fsmonitor configuration variable (see git-config(1)). But a warning
           is emitted when the change goes against the configured value, as the configured value
           will take effect next time the index is read and this will remove the intended effect
           of the option.

       --
           Do not interpret any more arguments as options.

       <file>
           Files to act on. Note that files beginning with .  are discarded. This includes ./file
           and dir/./file. If you don’t want this, then use cleaner names. The same applies to
           directories ending / and paths with //

USING --REFRESH

       --refresh does not calculate a new sha1 file or bring the index up to date for
       mode/content changes. But what it does do is to "re-match" the stat information of a file
       with the index, so that you can refresh the index for a file that hasn’t been changed but
       where the stat entry is out of date.

       For example, you’d want to do this after doing a git read-tree, to link up the stat index
       details with the proper files.

USING --CACHEINFO OR --INFO-ONLY

       --cacheinfo is used to register a file that is not in the current working directory. This
       is useful for minimum-checkout merging.

       To pretend you have a file with mode and sha1 at path, say:

           $ git update-index --cacheinfo <mode>,<sha1>,<path>

       --info-only is used to register files without placing them in the object database. This is
       useful for status-only repositories.

       Both --cacheinfo and --info-only behave similarly: the index is updated but the object
       database isn’t. --cacheinfo is useful when the object is in the database but the file
       isn’t available locally. --info-only is useful when the file is available, but you do not
       wish to update the object database.

USING --INDEX-INFO

       --index-info is a more powerful mechanism that lets you feed multiple entry definitions
       from the standard input, and designed specifically for scripts. It can take inputs of
       three formats:

        1. mode SP sha1 TAB path

           The first format is what "git-apply --index-info" reports, and used to reconstruct a
           partial tree that is used for phony merge base tree when falling back on 3-way merge.

        2. mode SP type SP sha1 TAB path

           The second format is to stuff git ls-tree output into the index file.

        3. mode SP sha1 SP stage TAB path

           This format is to put higher order stages into the index file and matches git ls-files
           --stage output.

       To place a higher stage entry to the index, the path should first be removed by feeding a
       mode=0 entry for the path, and then feeding necessary input lines in the third format.

       For example, starting with this index:

           $ git ls-files -s
           100644 8a1218a1024a212bb3db30becd860315f9f3ac52 0       frotz

       you can feed the following input to --index-info:

           $ git update-index --index-info
           0 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000      frotz
           100644 8a1218a1024a212bb3db30becd860315f9f3ac52 1       frotz
           100755 8a1218a1024a212bb3db30becd860315f9f3ac52 2       frotz

       The first line of the input feeds 0 as the mode to remove the path; the SHA-1 does not
       matter as long as it is well formatted. Then the second and third line feeds stage 1 and
       stage 2 entries for that path. After the above, we would end up with this:

           $ git ls-files -s
           100644 8a1218a1024a212bb3db30becd860315f9f3ac52 1       frotz
           100755 8a1218a1024a212bb3db30becd860315f9f3ac52 2       frotz

USING “ASSUME UNCHANGED” BIT

       Many operations in Git depend on your filesystem to have an efficient lstat(2)
       implementation, so that st_mtime information for working tree files can be cheaply checked
       to see if the file contents have changed from the version recorded in the index file.
       Unfortunately, some filesystems have inefficient lstat(2). If your filesystem is one of
       them, you can set "assume unchanged" bit to paths you have not changed to cause Git not to
       do this check. Note that setting this bit on a path does not mean Git will check the
       contents of the file to see if it has changed — it makes Git to omit any checking and
       assume it has not changed. When you make changes to working tree files, you have to
       explicitly tell Git about it by dropping "assume unchanged" bit, either before or after
       you modify them.

       In order to set "assume unchanged" bit, use --assume-unchanged option. To unset, use
       --no-assume-unchanged. To see which files have the "assume unchanged" bit set, use git
       ls-files -v (see git-ls-files(1)).

       The command looks at core.ignorestat configuration variable. When this is true, paths
       updated with git update-index paths... and paths updated with other Git commands that
       update both index and working tree (e.g. git apply --index, git checkout-index -u, and git
       read-tree -u) are automatically marked as "assume unchanged". Note that "assume unchanged"
       bit is not set if git update-index --refresh finds the working tree file matches the index
       (use git update-index --really-refresh if you want to mark them as "assume unchanged").

EXAMPLES

       To update and refresh only the files already checked out:

           $ git checkout-index -n -f -a && git update-index --ignore-missing --refresh

       On an inefficient filesystem with core.ignorestat set

               $ git update-index --really-refresh              (1)
               $ git update-index --no-assume-unchanged foo.c   (2)
               $ git diff --name-only                           (3)
               $ edit foo.c
               $ git diff --name-only                           (4)
               M foo.c
               $ git update-index foo.c                         (5)
               $ git diff --name-only                           (6)
               $ edit foo.c
               $ git diff --name-only                           (7)
               $ git update-index --no-assume-unchanged foo.c   (8)
               $ git diff --name-only                           (9)
               M foo.c

           1. forces lstat(2) to set "assume unchanged" bits for paths that match index.
           2. mark the path to be edited.
           3. this does lstat(2) and finds index matches the path.
           4. this does lstat(2) and finds index does not match the path.
           5. registering the new version to index sets "assume unchanged" bit.
           6. and it is assumed unchanged.
           7. even after you edit it.
           8. you can tell about the change after the fact.
           9. now it checks with lstat(2) and finds it has been changed.

SKIP-WORKTREE BIT

       Skip-worktree bit can be defined in one (long) sentence: When reading an entry, if it is
       marked as skip-worktree, then Git pretends its working directory version is up to date and
       read the index version instead.

       To elaborate, "reading" means checking for file existence, reading file attributes or file
       content. The working directory version may be present or absent. If present, its content
       may match against the index version or not. Writing is not affected by this bit, content
       safety is still first priority. Note that Git can update working directory file, that is
       marked skip-worktree, if it is safe to do so (i.e. working directory version matches index
       version)

       Although this bit looks similar to assume-unchanged bit, its goal is different from
       assume-unchanged bit’s. Skip-worktree also takes precedence over assume-unchanged bit when
       both are set.

SPLIT INDEX

       This mode is designed for repositories with very large indexes, and aims at reducing the
       time it takes to repeatedly write these indexes.

       In this mode, the index is split into two files, $GIT_DIR/index and
       $GIT_DIR/sharedindex.<SHA-1>. Changes are accumulated in $GIT_DIR/index, the split index,
       while the shared index file contains all index entries and stays unchanged.

       All changes in the split index are pushed back to the shared index file when the number of
       entries in the split index reaches a level specified by the splitIndex.maxPercentChange
       config variable (see git-config(1)).

       Each time a new shared index file is created, the old shared index files are deleted if
       their modification time is older than what is specified by the
       splitIndex.sharedIndexExpire config variable (see git-config(1)).

       To avoid deleting a shared index file that is still used, its modification time is updated
       to the current time everytime a new split index based on the shared index file is either
       created or read from.

UNTRACKED CACHE

       This cache is meant to speed up commands that involve determining untracked files such as
       git status.

       This feature works by recording the mtime of the working tree directories and then
       omitting reading directories and stat calls against files in those directories whose mtime
       hasn’t changed. For this to work the underlying operating system and file system must
       change the st_mtime field of directories if files in the directory are added, modified or
       deleted.

       You can test whether the filesystem supports that with the --test-untracked-cache option.
       The --untracked-cache option used to implicitly perform that test in older versions of
       Git, but that’s no longer the case.

       If you want to enable (or disable) this feature, it is easier to use the
       core.untrackedCache configuration variable (see git-config(1)) than using the
       --untracked-cache option to git update-index in each repository, especially if you want to
       do so across all repositories you use, because you can set the configuration variable to
       true (or false) in your $HOME/.gitconfig just once and have it affect all repositories you
       touch.

       When the core.untrackedCache configuration variable is changed, the untracked cache is
       added to or removed from the index the next time a command reads the index; while when
       --[no-|force-]untracked-cache are used, the untracked cache is immediately added to or
       removed from the index.

       Before 2.17, the untracked cache had a bug where replacing a directory with a symlink to
       another directory could cause it to incorrectly show files tracked by git as untracked.
       See the "status: add a failing test showing a core.untrackedCache bug" commit to git.git.
       A workaround for that is (and this might work for other undiscovered bugs in the future):

           $ git -c core.untrackedCache=false status

       This bug has also been shown to affect non-symlink cases of replacing a directory with a
       file when it comes to the internal structures of the untracked cache, but no case has been
       reported where this resulted in wrong "git status" output.

       There are also cases where existing indexes written by git versions before 2.17 will
       reference directories that don’t exist anymore, potentially causing many "could not open
       directory" warnings to be printed on "git status". These are new warnings for existing
       issues that were previously silently discarded.

       As with the bug described above the solution is to one-off do a "git status" run with
       core.untrackedCache=false to flush out the leftover bad data.

FILE SYSTEM MONITOR

       This feature is intended to speed up git operations for repos that have large working
       directories.

       It enables git to work together with a file system monitor (see the "fsmonitor-watchman"
       section of githooks(5)) that can inform it as to what files have been modified. This
       enables git to avoid having to lstat() every file to find modified files.

       When used in conjunction with the untracked cache, it can further improve performance by
       avoiding the cost of scanning the entire working directory looking for new files.

       If you want to enable (or disable) this feature, it is easier to use the core.fsmonitor
       configuration variable (see git-config(1)) than using the --fsmonitor option to git
       update-index in each repository, especially if you want to do so across all repositories
       you use, because you can set the configuration variable in your $HOME/.gitconfig just once
       and have it affect all repositories you touch.

       When the core.fsmonitor configuration variable is changed, the file system monitor is
       added to or removed from the index the next time a command reads the index. When
       --[no-]fsmonitor are used, the file system monitor is immediately added to or removed from
       the index.

CONFIGURATION

       The command honors core.filemode configuration variable. If your repository is on a
       filesystem whose executable bits are unreliable, this should be set to false (see git-
       config(1)). This causes the command to ignore differences in file modes recorded in the
       index and the file mode on the filesystem if they differ only on executable bit. On such
       an unfortunate filesystem, you may need to use git update-index --chmod=.

       Quite similarly, if core.symlinks configuration variable is set to false (see git-
       config(1)), symbolic links are checked out as plain files, and this command does not
       modify a recorded file mode from symbolic link to regular file.

       The command looks at core.ignorestat configuration variable. See Using "assume unchanged"
       bit section above.

       The command also looks at core.trustctime configuration variable. It can be useful when
       the inode change time is regularly modified by something outside Git (file system crawlers
       and backup systems use ctime for marking files processed) (see git-config(1)).

       The untracked cache extension can be enabled by the core.untrackedCache configuration
       variable (see git-config(1)).

SEE ALSO

       git-config(1), git-add(1), git-ls-files(1)

GIT

       Part of the git(1) suite