monotone1

Distributed version control system

Usage

monotone [options] <command> [parameters]

Overview

Monotone is a version control system, which allows you to keep old versions of files, as well as special manifest files which describe the location of files in a tree. Unlike other systems, versions in monotone are identified by cryptographic hash, and operations are authenticated by individual users' evaluating cryptographic signatures on meta-data, rather than any central authority.

Monotone keeps a collection of versions in a single-file relational database. It is essentially serverless, using network servers only as untrusted communication facilities. A monotone database is a regular file, which contains all the information needed to extract previous versions of files, verify signatures, merge and modify versions, and communicate with network servers.

Options

--help: Print help message.

--debug: Turn on debugging log on standard error stream. This is very verbose. Default is to be silent, unless an error occurs, in which case failure log is dumped.

--quiet: Turn off normal progress messages.

--dump=<file>: Dump debugging log to file on failure.

--nostd: Do not evaluate "standard" lua hooks compiled into monotone.

--norc: Do not load lua hooks from user's ~/.monotonerc file.

--rcfile=<file>: Load extra lua hooks from file (may be given multiple times).

--db=<file>: Use database in file.

--key=<keyid>: Use keyid for operations which produce RSA signatures. Default is inferred from presence of unique private key in database. Can also be customized on a per-branch basis with hook function get_branch_key(branchname).

-k <keyid>: An alias for --key=<keyid>

--branch=<branchname>: Use branchname for operations on a branch. Default is inferred in operations on existing branches (commit, update, etc).

-b <branchname>: An alias for --branch=<branchname>

--ticket=dot|count: Use the given method to print tickers. The count method prints the count for each ticker on one line, incrementing the numbers in place, while the dot method prints a continuous string of characters (like some programs provide a progress line of dots). The default is count.

--revision=<id>: Currently this option only applies to the diff command where it may be used to compare a working copy with a specific revision or to compare two specific revisions. It will likely apply to other commands in the future.

-r <id>: An alias for --revision=<id>

--message=<log message>: Use the given message as the changelog when committing a new revision rather than invoking the log message editor. Currently this option only applies to the commit command but it may also apply to the comment command in the future.

-m <log message>: An alias for --message=<log message>

--root=<root dir>: Stop the search for a working copy (containing the @file{MT} directory) at the specified root directory rather than at the physical root of the filesystem.

-xargs=<file>: Inject the contents of the file in place among the command line arguments. This may be useful in case the command line would otherwise become too long for your system. This option can be used more than once if needed.

-@ <file>: An alias for --xargs=<file>

Environment

EDITOR: Used to edit comments, log messages, etc.

VISUAL: Used in preference to EDITOR, if set.

Files

$HOME/.monotonerc: A lua script, used as a customization file.

Notes