PRISTINE-TAR(1) 						   pristine-tar 						   PRISTINE-TAR(1)

NAME

       pristine-tar - regenerate pristine tarballs

SYNOPSIS

       pristine-tar [-vdk] gendelta tarball delta

       pristine-tar [-vdk] gentar delta tarball

       pristine-tar [-vdk] [-m message] commit tarball [upstream]

       pristine-tar [-vdk] checkout tarball

       pristine-tar [-vdk] list

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.

       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.

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.

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.

AUTHOR

       Joey Hess <joeyh@debian.org>

       Licensed under the GPL, version 2 or above.

perl v5.14.2							    2013-06-01							   PRISTINE-TAR(1)