Repo command reference

Repo complements Git by simplifying work across multiple repositories. See Source Control Tools for an explanation of the relationship between Repo and Git. For more details on Repo, see the Repo README.

Repo use takes the following form:

repo command options

Optional elements are shown in brackets [ ]. For example, many commands take project-list as an argument. You can specify project-list as a list of names or a list of paths to local source directories for the projects:

repo sync [project0 project1 ... projectn]
repo sync [/path/to/project0 ... /path/to/projectn]

help

This page merely highlights key options. See the command line help for full details. When Repo is installed, you can find the latest documentation starting with a summary of all commands by running:

repo help

You can see detailed information about any command by running this within a Repo tree:

repo help command

For example, the following command yields a description and list of options for the init argument of Repo, which initializes Repo in the current directory. (See init for details.)

repo help init

Or to see only the list of available options, run:

repo command --help

For example:

repo init --help

init

repo init -u url [options]

Installs Repo in the current directory. This creates a .repo/ directory with Git repositories for the Repo source code and the standard Android manifest files.

Options:

• -u: Specify a URL from which to retrieve a manifest repository. The common manifest is found at https://android.googlesource.com/platform/manifest.
• -m: Select a manifest file within the repository. If no manifest name is selected, the default is default.xml.
• -b: Specify a revision, that is, a particular manifest-branch.

Note: For all remaining Repo commands, the current working directory must either be the parent directory of .repo/ or a subdirectory of the parent directory.

sync

repo sync [project-list]

Downloads new changes and updates the working files in your local environment, essentially accomplishing git fetch across all Git repositories. If you run repo sync without arguments, it synchronizes the files for all projects.

When you run repo sync, this is what happens:

• If the project has never been synchronized, then repo sync is equivalent to git clone. All branches in the remote repository are copied to the local project directory.

• If the project has been synchronized before, then repo sync is equivalent to:

  git remote update
  git rebase origin/branch
  

  where branch is the currently checked-out branch in the local project directory. If the local branch isn't tracking a branch in the remote repository, then no synchronization occurs for the project.

• If the Git rebase operation results in merge conflicts, use the normal Git commands (for example, git rebase --continue) to resolve the conflicts.

After a successful run of repo sync, the code in specified projects is up to date and synced with the code in the remote repository.

Here are key options. See repo help sync for more:

• -c: Fetch only the current manifest branch from the server.

• -d: Switch specified projects back to the manifest revision. This is helpful if the project is currently on a topic branch, but the manifest revision is temporarily needed.

• -f: Proceed with syncing other projects even if a project fails to sync.

• -jthreadcount: Split the sync across threads for faster completion. Ensure you don't overwhelm your machine - leave some CPU reserved for other tasks. To see the number of available CPUs, first run: nproc --all

• -q: Run quietly by suppressing status messages.

• -s: Sync to a known good build as specified by the manifest-server element in the current manifest.

upload

repo upload [project-list]

For the specified projects, Repo compares the local branches to the remote branches updated during the last Repo sync. Repo prompts you to select one or more of the branches that haven't been uploaded for review.

All commits on the selected branches are then transmitted to Gerrit over an HTTPS connection. You need to configure an HTTPS password to enable upload authorization. Visit the Password Generator to generate a new username/password pair to use over HTTPS.

When Gerrit receives the object data over its server, it turns each commit into a change so that reviewers can comment on a specific commit. To combine several checkpoint commits into a single commit, use git rebase -i before you run the upload.

If you run repo upload without arguments, it searches all of the projects for changes to upload.

To edit changes after they've been uploaded, use a tool like git rebase -i or git commit --amend to update your local commits. After your edits are complete:

• Verify that the updated branch is the currently checked out branch.
• Use repo upload --replace PROJECT to open the change matching editor.
• For each commit in the series, enter the Gerrit change ID inside the brackets:
  

  # Replacing from branch foo
  [ 3021 ] 35f2596c Refactor part of GetUploadableBranches to lookup one specific...
  [ 2829 ] ec18b4ba Update proto client to support patch set replacments
  # Insert change numbers in the brackets to add a new patch set.
  # To create a new change record, leave the brackets empty.
  

After the upload is complete, the changes have an additional patch set.

If you want to upload only the currently checked out Git branch, use the flag --current-branch (or --cbr for short).

diff

repo diff [project-list]

Shows outstanding changes between the commit and the working tree using git diff.

download

repo download target change

Downloads the specified change from the review system and makes it available in your project's local working directory.

For example, to download change 23823 into your platform/build directory:

repo download platform/build 23823

Running repo sync removes any commits retrieved with repo download. Or you can check out the remote branch using git checkout m/main.

Note: There are replication delays to all servers worldwide, so there's a slight mirroring lag between when a change is visible on the web in Gerrit and when repo download can find the change for all users.

forall

repo forall [project-list] -c command

Executes the given shell command in each project. The following additional environment variables are made available by repo forall:

• REPO_PROJECT is set to the unique name of the project.

• REPO_PATH is the path relative to the root of the client.

• REPO_REMOTE is the name of the remote system from the manifest.

• REPO_LREV is the name of the revision from the manifest, translated to a local tracking branch. Use this if you need to pass the manifest revision to a locally executed Git command.

• REPO_RREV is the name of the revision from the manifest, exactly as written in the manifest.

Options:

• -c: Command and arguments to execute. The command is evaluated through /bin/sh and any arguments after it are passed through as shell positional parameters.

• -p: Show project headers before output of the specified command. This is achieved by binding pipes to the command's stdin, stdout, and sterr streams, and piping all output into a continuous stream that is displayed in a single pager session.

• -v: Show messages the command writes to stderr.

prune

repo prune [project-list]

Prunes (deletes) topics that are already merged.

start

repo start
branch-name [project-list]

Begins a new branch for development, starting from the revision specified in the manifest.

The BRANCH_NAME argument provides a short description of the change you're trying to make to the projects. If you don't know, consider using the name default.

The project-list argument specifies which projects participate in this topic branch.

Note: A period ( . ) is shorthand for the project in the current working directory.

status

repo status [project-list]

Compares the working tree to the staging area (index) and the most recent commit on this branch (HEAD) in each project specified. Displays a summary line for each file where there is a difference between these three states.

To see the status of just the current branch, run repo status .. The status information is listed by project. For each file in the project, a two-letter code is used.

In the first column, an uppercase letter indicates how the staging area differs from the last committed state.

Letter	Meaning	Description
-	No change	Same in HEAD and index
A	Added	Not in HEAD, in index
M	Modified	In HEAD, modified in index
D	Deleted	In HEAD, not in index
R	Renamed	Not in HEAD, path changed in index
C	Copied	Not in HEAD, copied from another in index
T	Mode changed	Same content in HEAD and index, mode changed
U	Unmerged	Conflict between HEAD and index; resolution required

In the second column, a lowercase letter indicates how the working directory differs from the index.

Letter	Meaning	Description
-	New/unknown	Not in index, in work tree
m	Modified	In index, in work tree, modified
d	Deleted	In index, not in work tree

Handling repo errors

git commit -a # Commit local changes first so they aren't lost.
repo start branch-name # Start the branch
git reset --hard HEAD@{1} # And reset the branch so that it matches the commit before repo start
repo upload .

The error repo: error: no branches ready for upload appears when the command repo start wasn't run at the start of the session. To recover, you can check the commit id, start a new branch and then merge it.