NAME

       pristine-tar - regenerate pristine tarballs

SYNOPSIS

       pristine-tar [OPTIONS] gendelta tarball delta

       pristine-tar [OPTIONS] gentar delta tarball

       pristine-tar [OPTIONS] commit tarball [upstream]

       pristine-tar [OPTIONS] checkout tarball

       pristine-tar [OPTIONS] list

       pristine-tar [OPTIONS] verify tarball

DESCRIPTION

       pristine-tar can regenerate an exact copy of a pristine upstream tarball using only a small binary delta
       file and the contents of the tarball, which are typically kept in an upstream branch in version control.

       The delta file is designed to be checked into version control along-side the upstream branch, thus
       allowing Debian packages to be built entirely using sources in version control, without the need to keep
       copies of upstream tarballs.

       pristine-tar supports compressed tarballs, calling out to pristine-gz(1), pristine-bz2(1), and
       pristine-xz(1) to produce the pristine gzip, bzip2, and xz files.

COMMANDS

   pristine-tar gendelta tarball delta
       This takes the specified upstream tarball, and generates a small binary delta file that can later be used
       by pristine-tar gentar to recreate the tarball.

       If the delta filename is "-", it is written to standard output.

   pristine-tar gentar delta tarball
       This takes the specified delta file, and the files in the current directory, which must have identical
       content to those in the upstream tarball, and uses these to regenerate the pristine upstream tarball.

       If the delta filename is "-", it is read from standard input.

   pristine-tar commit tarball [upstream]
       pristine-tar commit generates a pristine-tar delta file for the specified tarball, and commits it to
       version control. The pristine-tar checkout command can later be used to recreate the original tarball
       based only on the information stored in version control.

       The upstream parameter specifies the tag or branch that contains the same content that is present in the
       tarball. This defaults to "refs/heads/upstream", or if there's no such branch, any branch matching
       "upstream". The name of the tree it points to will be recorded for later use by pristine-tar checkout.
       Note that the content does not need to be 100% identical to the content of the tarball, but if it is not,
       additional space will be used in the delta file.

       The delta files are stored in a branch named "pristine-tar", with filenames corresponding to the input
       tarball, with ".delta" appended. This branch is created or updated as needed to add each new delta.

       If tarball already exists previously, it will only be overwritten if it does not match a hash of the
       tarball that has been committed to version control.

   pristine-tar checkout tarball
       This regenerates a copy of the specified tarball using information previously saved in version control by
       pristine-tar commit.

   pristine-tar list
       This lists tarballs that pristine-tar is able to checkout from version control.

   pristine-tar verify tarball
       Verifies whether an existing tarball matches the one that has been committed to version control.

OPTIONS

       -v
       --verbose
           Verbose mode, show each command that is run.

       -d
       --debug
           Debug mode.

       -k
       --keep
           Don't clean up the temporary directory on exit.

       -m message
       --message=message
           Use this option to specify a custom commit message to pristine-tar commit.

           Applies to the commit command.

       -s signaturefile
       --signature-file=signaturefile
           Use this option to optionally commit or checkout an upstream signature file for the tarball. Note
           that extraction of signatures is not performed by default.

           Applies to the commit and checkout commands.

       -r
       --recompress
           Use this option to tell pristine-tar that it is OK to recompress the tarball if 1) the tarball can't
           be regenerated or 2) the delta file produced from the original tarball is larger than a given
           threshold (see also -B/--recompress-threshold-bytes and -T/--recompress-threshold-percent).

           Note that this modifies the original tarball on disk, and you probably shouldn't use it if you are
           also storing a upstream GPG signature of the original tarball (see --signature-file).

           On the other hand, the actual contents of the tarball stored by pristine-tar will be identical to the
           content of the upstream original tarbal even if the compressed tarball itself won't be bit-by-bit
           identical to the one released by upstream.

           A copy of the original tarball will be saved with ".backup" added to its filename.

           Applies to the commit and gendelta commands.

       -B N
       --recompress-threshold-bytes=N
           Recompress original tarball if the generated delta is larger then N bytes.  Default: 524288000 (500
           kB).

           If this option is passed explicitly in the command line, it implies --recompress.

           Applies to the commit and gendelta commands.

       -P N
       --recompress-threshold-percent=N
           Recompress original tarball if the generated delta is larger than N% of the size of the original
           tarball. Default: 30.

           If this option is passed explicitly in the command line, it implies --recompress.

           Applies to the commit and gendelta commands.

EXAMPLES

       Suppose you maintain the hello package, in a git repository. You have just created a tarball of the
       release, hello-1.0.tar.gz, which you will upload to a "forge" site.

       You want to ensure that, if the "forge" loses the tarball, you can always recreate exactly that same
       tarball. And you'd prefer not to keep copies of tarballs for every release, as that could use a lot of
       disk space when hello gets the background mp3s and user-contributed levels you are planning for version
       2.0.

       The solution is to use pristine-tar to commit a delta file that efficiently stores enough information to
       reproduce the tarball later.

           cd hello
           git tag -s 1.0
           pristine-tar commit ../hello-1.0.tar.gz 1.0

       Remember to tell git to push both the pristine-tar branch, and your tag:

           git push --all --tags

       Now it is a year later. The worst has come to pass; the "forge" lost all its data, you deleted the
       tarballs to make room for bug report emails, and you want to regenerate them. Happily, the git repository
       is still available.

           git clone git://github.com/joeyh/hello.git
           cd hello
           pristine-tar checkout ../hello-1.0.tar.gz

LIMITATIONS

       Only tarballs, gzipped tarballs, bzip2ed tarballs, and xzed tarballs are currently supported.

       Currently only the git revision control system is supported by the "checkout" and "commit" commands. It's
       ok if the working copy is not clean or has uncommitted changes, or has changes staged in the index; none
       of that will be touched by "checkout" or "commit".

ENVIRONMENT

       TMPDIR
           Specifies a location to place temporary files, other than the default.

       PRISTINE_TAR
           Defines command line options to be assumed by pristine-tar. Any options passed explicitly on the
           command line will override those.

           Options will be split on whitespaces, so if you want to pass an option that needs an argument, use
           the --opt=arg syntax instead of --opt arg.

       PRISTINE_ALL_XDELTA
           Defines the underlying binary delta tool to be used for new deltas. Supported values are "xdelta3"
           (default) and "xdelta".

           Existing deltas will be handled with the original tool that was used to create them, regardless of
           the value of $PRISTINE_ALL_XDELTA.

AUTHOR

       Joey Hess <joeyh@debian.org>

       Licensed under the GPL, version 2 or above.