Using git-ida from the command line

Teams stores your databases in an ordinary Git repository, so you are never locked into IDA's UI to manage them. You can clone, fetch, pull, push, branch, tag, and inspect history with the standard git command line or any Git client.

The one IDA-specific piece is git-ida: a small helper that lets Git store, transfer, and reconstruct packed IDA databases efficiently. This page explains how to make git-ida available to your shell and how to use it directly.

For day-to-day work inside IDA (Commit, Push, Pull, etc.) see Working with Git. This tutorial is intended for users who also want to drive the repository from a terminal or a script.

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What git-ida is

The git-ida binary ships with IDA and lives under tools/teams/ in your IDA installation (git-ida on Linux/macOS, git-ida.exe on Windows).

Git invokes it as a subcommand: when you type git ida <something>, Git looks for an executable named git-ida on your PATH and runs it. IDA configures it as a Git filter so that, whenever a database is checked out or committed, Git transparently produces a clean, compact representation instead of a raw, opaque blob. That is what makes IDA databases "diffable" and keeps repository size under control.

Storage and transport of databases is what git-ida handles. Diffing and merging the analysis itself is always done in IDA. git diff on a database is not meaningful, and content conflicts must be resolved in IDA's merge view. See Merging and automerging.

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Making git-ida available to your shell

The first time you use IDA with Teams add-on, IDA automatically registers git-ida in your global git configuration, so it works in any terminal session without manual setup.

First, check whether it already works:

git ida version

If you see a version string (e.g. git-ida 1.x.x), you are done. Skip the rest of this section.

If you instead get an error like 'ida' is not a git command, pick one of the two options below.

Option A (recommended): add tools/teams to your PATH

Point your shell at IDA's tools/teams directory. Adjust the path to match your installation.

• Linux / macOS (add to ~/.bashrc, ~/.zshrc, …):

export PATH="$PATH:/path/to/ida/tools/teams"

• Windows (PowerShell, persistent for the current user):

setx PATH "$env:PATH;C:\Program Files\IDA Professional 9.4\tools\teams"

Open a new terminal and run git ida version again to confirm.

Option B: define a git ida alias

If you would rather not change PATH, register a Git alias that points directly at the bundled binary. Quote the path if it contains spaces.

git config --global alias.ida '!"/path/to/ida/tools/teams/git-ida"'

After this, git ida version, git ida initialize, etc. resolve through the alias regardless of PATH.

The alias is only needed if git ida version does not already work. If git-ida is on your PATH, Git finds it automatically and the alias is redundant.

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What IDA already configured for you

When a repository is created or cloned through IDA, a few local settings are written so that command-line use behaves the same as the in-IDA workflow. Knowing they exist helps when scripting:

Setting	Why it's there
filter.* (via .gitattributes)	The git-ida clean/smudge filter that compacts and reconstructs databases on commit/checkout.
pull.rebase = false	Makes a manual git pull use a merge (the same model IDA's Pull uses), so CLI and UI pulls behave consistently.
ida.path	Absolute path to the IDA executable, so git-ida can launch IDA when a diff or merge is required.
credential.helper	For HTTPS remotes, lets Git authenticate without re-prompting (credentials are stored by IDA in the OS keychain).

These are stored in the repository's local config (.git/config), so they travel with that working copy and do not affect your other repos.

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Everyday command-line operations

Once git-ida is available, the usual Git commands work as expected:

git clone <url>           # git-ida reconstructs databases on checkout
git status
git log -- malware.i64    # history for a specific database
git fetch
git pull                  # merge-style, matching IDA
git push
git switch -c experiment  # branches and tags work normally
git tag v1

Because the repository is a standard Git repository, third-party Git GUIs, IDE integrations, CI pipelines, and your provider's web UI all work too.

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Switching branches

Switching to another branch checks out a different set of databases. Git does not always re-run the git-ida smudge filter on files it considers unchanged, so the databases in your working copy may not be fully reconstructed after a plain git switch / git checkout.

To be safe, force Git to re-materialize every file through the filter by resetting hard to the branch tip right after switching:

git switch <branch>               # or: git checkout <branch>
git reset --hard origin/<branch>

This is exactly what IDA does internally after cloning a repository, and it guarantees every database on the branch is correctly rebuilt.

Running git reset --hard discards uncommitted local changes. Before running it, commit or stash your work, and make sure none of the affected databases are open in IDA (the files are about to be overwritten on disk).

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git ida initialize

IDA runs git ida initialize automatically when you use Create Repository or Clone Repository. Run it yourself only when you set up a repository outside of IDA.

The git ida initialize command configures the current repository to handle IDA databases: it registers the git-ida filter, writes the .gitattributes and .gitignore entries IDA relies on, and sets up the merge driver.

For example:

# You created or cloned a repo with plain git and want IDA support in it
cd my-repo
git ida initialize

Useful flags:

Flag	Purpose
--lfs	Track databases with Git LFS (recommended when databases exceed your server's file-size limit). Requires git-lfs to be installed.
--override	Re-apply the IDA configuration even if some of it is already present. Handy for repairing a repository whose .gitattributes/filter config got out of sync.

git ida initialize --lfs          # enable LFS for large databases
git ida initialize --override     # re-apply / repair configuration

After running it, you can inspect what was set up:

cat .gitattributes        # filter / merge attributes for *.i64 / *.idb
git config --local --list # ida.* and filter.* entries

Quick reference

git ida version                 # verify git-ida is reachable
git ida initialize              # set up IDA support in a repo (rarely needed manually)
git ida initialize --lfs        # ... with Git LFS for large databases
git ida initialize --override   # ... re-apply / repair configuration

# after switching branches, force the filter to rebuild every database:
git switch <branch> && git reset --hard origin/<branch>

# one-time setup so the terminal can find git-ida (fallback if auto-registration didn't work):
export PATH="$PATH:/path/to/ida/tools/teams"            # Option A (recommended)
git config --global alias.ida '!"/path/to/ida/tools/teams/git-ida"'  # Option B