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NAME
git-notes - Add or inspect object notes
SYNOPSIS
git notes [list [<object>]]
git notes add [-f] [--allow-empty] [--[no-]separator | --separator=<paragraph-break>] [--[no-]stripspace] [-F <file> | -m <msg> | (-c | -C) <object>] [-e] [<object>]
git notes copy [-f] ( --stdin | <from-object> [<to-object>] )
git notes append [--allow-empty] [--[no-]separator | --separator=<paragraph-break>] [--[no-]stripspace] [-F <file> | -m <msg> | (-c | -C) <object>] [-e] [<object>]
git notes edit [--allow-empty] [<object>] [--[no-]stripspace]
git notes show [<object>]
git notes merge [-v | -q] [-s <strategy> ] <notes-ref>
git notes merge --commit [-v | -q]
git notes merge --abort [-v | -q]
git notes remove [--ignore-missing] [--stdin] [<object>...]
git notes prune [-n] [-v]
git notes get-ref
DESCRIPTION
Adds, removes, or reads notes attached to objects, without touching the objects themselves.
By default, notes are saved to and read from refs/notes/commits, but this default can be overridden. See
the OPTIONS, CONFIGURATION, and ENVIRONMENT sections below. If this ref does not exist, it will be
quietly created when it is first needed to store a note.
A typical use of notes is to supplement a commit message without changing the commit itself. Notes can be
shown by git log along with the original commit message. To distinguish these notes from the message
stored in the commit object, the notes are indented like the message, after an unindented line saying
"Notes (<refname>):" (or "Notes:" for refs/notes/commits).
Notes can also be added to patches prepared with git format-patch by using the --notes option. Such notes
are added as a patch commentary after a three dash separator line.
To change which notes are shown by git log, see the notes.displayRef discussion in CONFIGURATION.
See the notes.rewrite.<command> configuration for a way to carry notes across commands that rewrite
commits.
SUBCOMMANDS
list
List the notes object for a given object. If no object is given, show a list of all note objects and
the objects they annotate (in the format "<note-object> <annotated-object>"). This is the default
subcommand if no subcommand is given.
add
Add notes for a given object (defaults to HEAD). Abort if the object already has notes (use -f to
overwrite existing notes). However, if you’re using add interactively (using an editor to supply the
notes contents), then - instead of aborting - the existing notes will be opened in the editor (like
the edit subcommand). If you specify multiple -m and -F, a blank line will be inserted between the
messages. Use the --separator option to insert other delimiters. You can use -e to edit and fine-tune
the message(s) supplied from -m and -F options interactively (using an editor) before adding the
note.
copy
Copy the notes for the first object onto the second object (defaults to HEAD). Abort if the second
object already has notes, or if the first object has none (use -f to overwrite existing notes to the
second object). This subcommand is equivalent to: git notes add [-f] -C $(git notes list
<from-object>) <to-object>
In --stdin mode, take lines in the format
<from-object> SP <to-object> [ SP <rest> ] LF
on standard input, and copy the notes from each <from-object> to its corresponding <to-object>. (The
optional <rest> is ignored so that the command can read the input given to the post-rewrite hook.)
--stdin cannot be combined with object names given on the command line.
append
Append new message(s) given by -m or -F options to an existing note, or add them as a new note if one
does not exist, for the object (defaults to HEAD). When appending to an existing note, a blank line
is added before each new message as an inter-paragraph separator. The separator can be customized
with the --separator option. Edit the notes to be appended given by -m and -F options with -e
interactively (using an editor) before appending the note.
edit
Edit the notes for a given object (defaults to HEAD).
show
Show the notes for a given object (defaults to HEAD).
merge
Merge the given notes ref into the current notes ref. This will try to merge the changes made by the
given notes ref (called "remote") since the merge-base (if any) into the current notes ref (called
"local").
If conflicts arise and a strategy for automatically resolving conflicting notes (see the "NOTES MERGE
STRATEGIES" section) is not given, the manual resolver is used. This resolver checks out the
conflicting notes in a special worktree (.git/NOTES_MERGE_WORKTREE), and instructs the user to
manually resolve the conflicts there. When done, the user can either finalize the merge with git
notes merge --commit, or abort the merge with git notes merge --abort.
remove
Remove the notes for given objects (defaults to HEAD). When giving zero or one object from the
command line, this is equivalent to specifying an empty note message to the edit subcommand.
In --stdin mode, also remove the object names given on standard input. In other words, --stdin can be
combined with object names from the command line.
prune
Remove all notes for non-existing/unreachable objects.
get-ref
Print the current notes ref. This provides an easy way to retrieve the current notes ref (e.g. from
scripts).
OPTIONS
-f, --force
When adding notes to an object that already has notes, overwrite the existing notes (instead of
aborting).
-m <msg>, --message=<msg>
Use the given note message (instead of prompting). If multiple -m options are given, their values are
concatenated as separate paragraphs.
-F <file>, --file=<file>
Take the note message from the given file. Use - to read the note message from the standard input.
-C <object>, --reuse-message=<object>
Take the given blob object (for example, another note) as the note message. (Use git notes copy
<object> instead to copy notes between objects.) Implies --no-stripspace since the default behavior
is to copy the message verbatim.
-c <object>, --reedit-message=<object>
Like -C, but with -c the editor is invoked, so that the user can further edit the note message.
--allow-empty
Allow an empty note object to be stored. The default behavior is to automatically remove empty notes.
--separator=<paragraph-break>, --separator, --no-separator
Specify a string used as a custom inter-paragraph separator (a newline is added at the end as
needed). If --no-separator, no separators will be added between paragraphs. Defaults to a blank line.
--stripspace, --no-stripspace
Clean up whitespace. Specifically (see git-stripspace(1)):
• remove trailing whitespace from all lines
• collapse multiple consecutive empty lines into one empty line
• remove empty lines from the beginning and end of the input
• add a missing \n to the last line if necessary.
--stripspace is the default except for -C/--reuse-message. However, keep in mind that this depends on
the order of similar options. For example, for -C <object> -m<message>, --stripspace will be used
because the default for -m overrides the previous -C. This is a known limitation that may be fixed in
the future.
--ref=<ref>
Manipulate the notes tree in <ref>. This overrides GIT_NOTES_REF and the core.notesRef configuration.
The ref specifies the full refname when it begins with refs/notes/; when it begins with notes/, refs/
and otherwise refs/notes/ is prefixed to form a full name of the ref.
--ignore-missing
Do not consider it an error to request removing notes from an object that does not have notes
attached to it.
--stdin
Only valid for remove and copy. See the respective subcommands.
-n, --dry-run
Do not remove anything; just report the object names whose notes would be removed.
-s <strategy>, --strategy=<strategy>
When merging notes, resolve notes conflicts using the given strategy. The following strategies are
recognized: manual (default), ours, theirs, union and cat_sort_uniq. This option overrides the
notes.mergeStrategy configuration setting. See the "NOTES MERGE STRATEGIES" section below for more
information on each notes merge strategy.
--commit
Finalize an in-progress git notes merge. Use this option when you have resolved the conflicts that
git notes merge stored in .git/NOTES_MERGE_WORKTREE. This amends the partial merge commit created by
git notes merge (stored in .git/NOTES_MERGE_PARTIAL) by adding the notes in
.git/NOTES_MERGE_WORKTREE. The notes ref stored in the .git/NOTES_MERGE_REF symref is updated to the
resulting commit.
--abort
Abort/reset an in-progress git notes merge, i.e. a notes merge with conflicts. This simply removes
all files related to the notes merge.
-q, --quiet
When merging notes, operate quietly.
-v, --verbose
When merging notes, be more verbose. When pruning notes, report all object names whose notes are
removed.
DISCUSSION
Commit notes are blobs containing extra information about an object (usually information to supplement a
commit’s message). These blobs are taken from notes refs. A notes ref is usually a branch which contains
"files" whose paths are the object names for the objects they describe, with some directory separators
included for performance reasons [1].
Every notes change creates a new commit at the specified notes ref. You can therefore inspect the history
of the notes by invoking, e.g., git log -p notes/commits. Currently the commit message only records which
operation triggered the update, and the commit authorship is determined according to the usual rules (see
git-commit(1)). These details may change in the future.
It is also permitted for a notes ref to point directly to a tree object, in which case the history of the
notes can be read with git log -p -g <refname>.
NOTES MERGE STRATEGIES
The default notes merge strategy is manual, which checks out conflicting notes in a special work tree for
resolving notes conflicts (.git/NOTES_MERGE_WORKTREE), and instructs the user to resolve the conflicts in
that work tree. When done, the user can either finalize the merge with git notes merge --commit, or abort
the merge with git notes merge --abort.
Users may select an automated merge strategy from among the following using either -s/--strategy option
or configuring notes.mergeStrategy accordingly:
ours automatically resolves conflicting notes in favor of the local version (i.e. the current notes ref).
theirs automatically resolves notes conflicts in favor of the remote version (i.e. the given notes ref
being merged into the current notes ref).
union automatically resolves notes conflicts by concatenating the local and remote versions.
cat_sort_uniq is similar to union, but in addition to concatenating the local and remote versions, this
strategy also sorts the resulting lines, and removes duplicate lines from the result. This is equivalent
to applying the "cat | sort | uniq" shell pipeline to the local and remote versions. This strategy is
useful if the notes follow a line-based format where one wants to avoid duplicated lines in the merge
result. Note that if either the local or remote version contain duplicate lines prior to the merge, these
will also be removed by this notes merge strategy.
EXAMPLES
You can use notes to add annotations with information that was not available at the time a commit was
written.
$ git notes add -m 'Tested-by: Johannes Sixt <j6t@kdbg.org>' 72a144e2
$ git show -s 72a144e
[...]
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Notes:
Tested-by: Johannes Sixt <j6t@kdbg.org>
In principle, a note is a regular Git blob, and any kind of (non-)format is accepted. You can
binary-safely create notes from arbitrary files using git hash-object:
$ cc *.c
$ blob=$(git hash-object -w a.out)
$ git notes --ref=built add --allow-empty -C "$blob" HEAD
(You cannot simply use git notes --ref=built add -F a.out HEAD because that is not binary-safe.) Of
course, it doesn’t make much sense to display non-text-format notes with git log, so if you use such
notes, you’ll probably need to write some special-purpose tools to do something useful with them.
CONFIGURATION
core.notesRef
Notes ref to read and manipulate instead of refs/notes/commits. Must be an unabbreviated ref name.
This setting can be overridden through the environment and command line.
Everything above this line in this section isn’t included from the git-config(1) documentation. The
content that follows is the same as what’s found there:
notes.mergeStrategy
Which merge strategy to choose by default when resolving notes conflicts. Must be one of manual,
ours, theirs, union, or cat_sort_uniq. Defaults to manual. See the "NOTES MERGE STRATEGIES" section
of git-notes(1) for more information on each strategy.
This setting can be overridden by passing the --strategy option to git-notes(1).
notes.<name>.mergeStrategy
Which merge strategy to choose when doing a notes merge into refs/notes/<name>. This overrides the
more general notes.mergeStrategy. See the "NOTES MERGE STRATEGIES" section in git-notes(1) for more
information on the available strategies.
notes.displayRef
Which ref (or refs, if a glob or specified more than once), in addition to the default set by
core.notesRef or GIT_NOTES_REF, to read notes from when showing commit messages with the git log
family of commands.
This setting can be overridden with the GIT_NOTES_DISPLAY_REF environment variable, which must be a
colon separated list of refs or globs.
A warning will be issued for refs that do not exist, but a glob that does not match any refs is
silently ignored.
This setting can be disabled by the --no-notes option to the git-log(1) family of commands, or by the
--notes=<ref> option accepted by those commands.
The effective value of core.notesRef (possibly overridden by GIT_NOTES_REF) is also implicitly added
to the list of refs to be displayed.
notes.rewrite.<command>
When rewriting commits with <command> (currently amend or rebase), if this variable is false, git
will not copy notes from the original to the rewritten commit. Defaults to true. See also
notes.rewriteRef below.
This setting can be overridden with the GIT_NOTES_REWRITE_REF environment variable, which must be a
colon separated list of refs or globs.
notes.rewriteMode
When copying notes during a rewrite (see the notes.rewrite.<command> option), determines what to do
if the target commit already has a note. Must be one of overwrite, concatenate, cat_sort_uniq, or
ignore. Defaults to concatenate.
This setting can be overridden with the GIT_NOTES_REWRITE_MODE environment variable.
notes.rewriteRef
When copying notes during a rewrite, specifies the (fully qualified) ref whose notes should be
copied. May be a glob, in which case notes in all matching refs will be copied. You may also specify
this configuration several times.
Does not have a default value; you must configure this variable to enable note rewriting. Set it to
refs/notes/commits to enable rewriting for the default commit notes.
Can be overridden with the GIT_NOTES_REWRITE_REF environment variable. See notes.rewrite.<command>
above for a further description of its format.
ENVIRONMENT
GIT_NOTES_REF
Which ref to manipulate notes from, instead of refs/notes/commits. This overrides the core.notesRef
setting.
GIT_NOTES_DISPLAY_REF
Colon-delimited list of refs or globs indicating which refs, in addition to the default from
core.notesRef or GIT_NOTES_REF, to read notes from when showing commit messages. This overrides the
notes.displayRef setting.
A warning will be issued for refs that do not exist, but a glob that does not match any refs is
silently ignored.
GIT_NOTES_REWRITE_MODE
When copying notes during a rewrite, what to do if the target commit already has a note. Must be one
of overwrite, concatenate, cat_sort_uniq, or ignore. This overrides the core.rewriteMode setting.
GIT_NOTES_REWRITE_REF
When rewriting commits, which notes to copy from the original to the rewritten commit. Must be a
colon-delimited list of refs or globs.
If not set in the environment, the list of notes to copy depends on the notes.rewrite.<command> and
notes.rewriteRef settings.
GIT
Part of the git(1) suite
NOTES
1. Permitted pathnames have the form bf/fe/30/.../680d5a...: a sequence of directory names of two
hexadecimal digits each followed by a filename with the rest of the object ID.
Git 2.51.0 08/28/2025 GIT-NOTES(1)