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5.7 Packet I/O

Monotone can produce and consume data in a convenient, portable form called packets. A packet is a sequence of ASCII text, wrapped at 70-columns and easily sent through email or other transports. If you wish to manually transmit a piece of information – for example a public key – from one monotone database to another, it is often convenient to read and write packets.

Note: earlier versions of monotone queued and replayed packet streams for their networking system. This older networking system is deprecated and will be removed in a future version, as the netsync protocol has several properties which make it advantageous as a communication system. However, the packet i/o facility will remain in monotone as a utility for moving individual data items around manually.

monotone certs id
This command prints out an rcert packet for each cert in your database associated with id. These can be used to transport certificates safely between monotone databases.
monotone fdata id
monotone mdata id
monotone rdata id
These commands print out an fdata, mdata or rdata packet for the file, manifest or revision id in your database. These can be used to transport files, manifests or revisions, in their entirety, safely between monotone databases.
monotone fdelta id1 id2
monotone mdelta id1 id2
These commands print out an fdelta or mdelta packet for the differences between file or manifest versions id1 and id2, in your database. These can be used to transport file or manifest differences safely between monotone databases.
monotone privkey keyid
monotone pubkey keyid
These commands print out an privkey or pubkey packet for the rsa key keyid. These can be used to transport public or private keys safely between monotone databases.
monotone read
This command reads packets from stdin and applies them to your database.