When pushing a new or updated commit to Gerrit, you push that commit using a reference, in the refs/for namespace. This reference must also define the target branch, such as refs/for/[BRANCH_NAME].

For example, to create a new change on the master branch, you would use the following command:

git push origin HEAD:refs/for/master

The refs/for/[BRANCH_NAME] syntax allows Gerrit to differentiate between commits that are pushed for review and commits that are pushed directly into the repository.

Gerrit supports using either the full name or the short name for a branch. For instance, this command:

git commit
git push origin HEAD:refs/for/master

is the same as:

git commit
git push origin HEAD:refs/for/refs/heads/master

Gerrit uses the refs/for/ prefix to map the concept of “Pushing for Review” to the git protocol. For the git client, it looks like every push goes to the same branch, such as refs/for/master. In fact, for each commit pushed to this ref, Gerrit creates a new ref under a refs/changes/ namespace, which Gerrit uses to track these commits. These references use the following format:

refs/changes/[CD]/[ABCD]/[EF]

Where:

  • [CD] is the last two digits of the change number

  • [ABCD] is the change number

  • [EF] is the patch set number

For example:

refs/changes/20/884120/1

You can use the change reference to fetch its corresponding commit:

git fetch https://[GERRIT_SERVER_URL]/[PROJECT] refs/changes/[XX]/[YYYY]/[ZZ] \
&& git checkout FETCH_HEAD

Note

The fetch command can be copied from the download command in the Change screen.