How to use git am to apply patches from email messages?

Question

I am pretty familiar with git(the basic stuff atleast-branches, merges,collaboration with peers etc.) but the other day a friend of mine told me that we could use git with our mailbox. The command involved is git am (manual page here).

Please could someone help me get started with git am.

Answer 1

The other big thing involved is git format-patch. This will create the patches to be emailed; they can then be sent using git send-email or directly. For example:

# create a patch for each commit from origin's master to yours git format-patch origin/master..master  # now send them...  # there are a zillion options here, and also some configuration; read the man page git send-email [email protected] [email protected] ... *.patch 

git am will accept the patches created by format-patch, and apply them sequentially, for example:

git am *.patch 

You'll have to figure out how to export the patches in mbox format from your mail client yourself, though I suppose you could also simply send them as attachments or transfer them directly.

You can try this out for yourself entirely within one repository to see how it works. Create a set of patches as above, then check out the starting point, and use git am to apply the patches.

Answer 2

You need a mail client that can export mail as mbox file. Export the mails and run git-am your-mbox-file. It's done.