Teach git-checkout-index to read filenames from stdin.
Since git-checkout-index is often used from scripts which
may have a stream of filenames they wish to checkout it is
more convenient to use --stdin than xargs. On platforms
where fork performance is currently sub-optimal and
the length of a command line is limited (*cough* Cygwin
*cough*) running a single git-checkout-index process for
a large number of files beats spawning it multiple times
from xargs.
File names are still accepted on the command line if
--stdin is not supplied. Nothing is performed if no files
are supplied on the command line or by stdin.
Signed-off-by: Shawn O. Pearce <spearce@spearce.org>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net>
diff --git a/Documentation/git-checkout-index.txt b/Documentation/git-checkout-index.txt
index 2a1e526..b0b6588 100644
--- a/Documentation/git-checkout-index.txt
+++ b/Documentation/git-checkout-index.txt
@@ -10,7 +10,9 @@
--------
[verse]
'git-checkout-index' [-u] [-q] [-a] [-f] [-n] [--prefix=<string>]
- [--stage=<number>] [--] <file>...
+ [--stage=<number>]
+ [-z] [--stdin]
+ [--] [<file>]\*
DESCRIPTION
-----------
@@ -45,6 +47,15 @@
Instead of checking out unmerged entries, copy out the
files from named stage. <number> must be between 1 and 3.
+--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.
+
+-z::
+ Only meaningful with `--stdin`; paths are separated with
+ NUL character instead of LF.
+
--::
Do not interpret any more arguments as options.
@@ -64,7 +75,12 @@
which will force all existing `*.h` files to be replaced with their
cached copies. If an empty command line implied "all", then this would
-force-refresh everything in the index, which was not the point.
+force-refresh everything in the index, which was not the point. But
+since git-checkout-index accepts --stdin it would be faster to use:
+
+----------------
+$ find . -name '*.h' -print0 | git-checkout-index -f -z --stdin
+----------------
The `--` is just a good idea when you know the rest will be filenames;
it will prevent problems with a filename of, for example, `-a`.
