GIT-NOTES(1)

📦
version 2.56.0 · 25 versions
, in arch rolling

💖 GIT-NOTES(1) 💖

okay bestie, welcome to the git-notes glow-up ✨ (that's from the Git Manual, mwah 💅). This is the page about adding or inspecting object notes, and yes we're gonna get through all of it together, no cap 🫶

🌸 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 🦋

So basically: this command adds, removes, or reads notes that are attached to objects — and the whole point is it does that without touching the objects themselves. Like, the object stays iconic, the note is just the little sticky note on top 🎀

By default, notes get saved to and read from refs/notes/commits, but that default can absolutely be overridden. Peep the OPTIONS, CONFIGURATION, and ENVIRONMENT sections below for that 👀. And if this ref doesn't exist yet? It'll be quietly created the first time it's actually needed to store a note. No drama, it just happens.

A classic use of notes is to supplement a commit message without changing the commit itself. Notes can be shown by git log right alongside the original commit message 💖. And to tell these notes apart from the message stored in the commit object, the notes get indented like the message, after an unindented line saying "Notes (<refname>):" — or just "Notes:" for refs/notes/commits.

Notes can also be added to patches prepared with git format-patch by using the --notes option — those notes get added as patch commentary after a three dash separator line. slay ✨

Wanna change which notes get shown by git log? Go read the notes.displayRef discussion in CONFIGURATION.

And see the notes.rewrite.<command> configuration for a way to carry notes across commands that rewrite commits. very handy, iykyk 🧚

👑 SUBCOMMANDS 👑

  • list — List the notes object for a given object. If you don't give it an object, it shows a list of all note objects and the objects they annotate, in the format "<note-object> <annotated-object>". This is the default subcommand if you don't give any subcommand at all — main character energy, it just steps up 🌟
  • add — Add notes for a given object (defaults to HEAD). It aborts if the object already has notes (use -f to overwrite the existing ones). But — if you're using add interactively (like, using an editor to supply the notes contents), then instead of aborting, the existing notes get opened in the editor, just like the edit subcommand. Cute, right? If you specify multiple -m and -F, a blank line gets inserted between the messages. Use the --separator option to insert other delimiters. And 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). It aborts if the second object already has notes, or if the first object has none (use -f to overwrite existing notes on 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. periodt 🚫

  • append — Append new message(s) given by -m or -F options to an existing note, or add them as a new note if one doesn't exist, for the object (defaults to HEAD). When appending to an existing note, a blank line gets added before each new message as an inter-paragraph separator — and you can customize that separator 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). go off ✍️
  • show — Show the notes for a given object (defaults to HEAD). peekaboo 👀
  • merge — Merge the given notes ref into the current notes ref. This tries 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 gets used. That 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 you're done, you 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, it also removes 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. bye bye 🧹
  • get-ref — Print the current notes ref. This is the easy way to retrieve the current notes ref (like, from scripts). 🎯

💅 OPTIONS 💅

  • -f, --force — When adding notes to an object that already has notes, overwrite the existing notes (instead of aborting). no thoughts, just force 🔥
  • -m <msg>, --message=<msg> — Use the given note message (instead of prompting). If multiple -m options are given, their values get 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.) This 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 gets invoked, so you 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. (yes it's giving "why would you" but the option is right there 💀)
  • --separator=<paragraph-break>, --separator, --no-separator — Specify a string used as a custom inter-paragraph separator (a newline gets added at the end as needed). If --no-separator, no separators will be added between paragraphs at all. 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. BUT 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. (we're aware, we're aware 🙈)

  • --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/ gets prefixed, and otherwise refs/notes/ gets 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 doesn't have notes attached to it. be nice 💜
  • --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. window shopping 🛍️
  • -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 info on each notes merge strategy 👑
  • --commit — Finalize an in-progress git notes merge. Use this option when you've 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 gets updated to the resulting commit. wrap it up bestie 🎀
  • --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. nvm, forget it 💀
  • -q, --quiet — When merging notes, operate quietly. shhh 🤫
  • -v, --verbose — When merging notes, be more verbose. When pruning notes, report all object names whose notes are removed. tell me everything 🗣️

🌈 DISCUSSION 🌈

Commit notes are blobs containing extra information about an object (usually information to supplement a commit's message). These blobs get 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]. iykyk 🧚

Every notes change creates a new commit at the specified notes ref. So you can totally 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 — so don't get too attached 👀

It's 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>. iconic ⭐

🫶 NOTES MERGE STRATEGIES 🫶

okay so the default notes merge strategy is manual, and bestie it literally checks out conflicting notes in a special work tree for resolving notes conflicts at .git/NOTES_MERGE_WORKTREE, then tells you to go resolve the conflicts in that work tree. when you’re done, you can either finalize the merge with git notes merge --commit, or abort the merge with git notes merge --abort. iconic.

you can pick an automated merge strategy from the list below using either the -s/--strategy option or by 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 — 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. obsessed with the historical receipts 💅

$ 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.
quick meta note: 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. the family tree stays iconic ✨

🍓 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.

okay bestie, that’s the whole GIT-NOTES(1) page 💖 source/version: Git 2.56.0; date: 2026-09-27 — you ate, periodt 🫶✨

📦 where this page comes from