1git-pack-objects(1) 2=================== 3 4NAME 5---- 6git-pack-objects - Create a packed archive of objects 7 8 9SYNOPSIS 10-------- 11[verse] 12'git-pack-objects' [-q] [--no-reuse-delta] [--delta-base-offset] [--non-empty] 13 [--local] [--incremental] [--window=N] [--depth=N] [--all-progress] 14 [--revs [--unpacked | --all]*] [--stdout | base-name] < object-list 15 16 17DESCRIPTION 18----------- 19Reads list of objects from the standard input, and writes a packed 20archive with specified base-name, or to the standard output. 21 22A packed archive is an efficient way to transfer set of objects 23between two repositories, and also is an archival format which 24is efficient to access. The packed archive format (.pack) is 25designed to be unpackable without having anything else, but for 26random access, accompanied with the pack index file (.idx). 27 28'git-unpack-objects' command can read the packed archive and 29expand the objects contained in the pack into "one-file 30one-object" format; this is typically done by the smart-pull 31commands when a pack is created on-the-fly for efficient network 32transport by their peers. 33 34Placing both in the pack/ subdirectory of $GIT_OBJECT_DIRECTORY (or 35any of the directories on $GIT_ALTERNATE_OBJECT_DIRECTORIES) 36enables git to read from such an archive. 37 38In a packed archive, an object is either stored as a compressed 39whole, or as a difference from some other object. The latter is 40often called a delta. 41 42 43OPTIONS 44------- 45base-name:: 46 Write into a pair of files (.pack and .idx), using 47 <base-name> to determine the name of the created file. 48 When this option is used, the two files are written in 49 <base-name>-<SHA1>.{pack,idx} files. <SHA1> is a hash 50 of the sorted object names to make the resulting filename 51 based on the pack content, and written to the standard 52 output of the command. 53 54--stdout:: 55 Write the pack contents (what would have been written to 56 .pack file) out to the standard output. 57 58--revs:: 59 Read the revision arguments from the standard input, instead of 60 individual object names. The revision arguments are processed 61 the same way as gitlink:git-rev-list[1] with `--objects` flag 62 uses its `commit` arguments to build the list of objects it 63 outputs. The objects on the resulting list are packed. 64 65--unpacked:: 66 This implies `--revs`. When processing the list of 67 revision arguments read from the standard input, limit 68 the objects packed to those that are not already packed. 69 70--all:: 71 This implies `--revs`. In addition to the list of 72 revision arguments read from the standard input, pretend 73 as if all refs under `$GIT_DIR/refs` are specified to be 74 included. 75 76--window=[N], --depth=[N]:: 77 These two options affect how the objects contained in 78 the pack are stored using delta compression. The 79 objects are first internally sorted by type, size and 80 optionally names and compared against the other objects 81 within --window to see if using delta compression saves 82 space. --depth limits the maximum delta depth; making 83 it too deep affects the performance on the unpacker 84 side, because delta data needs to be applied that many 85 times to get to the necessary object. 86 The default value for --window is 10 and --depth is 50. 87 88--max-pack-size=<n>:: 89 Maximum size of each output packfile, expressed in MiB. 90 If specified, multiple packfiles may be created. 91 The default is unlimited. 92 93--incremental:: 94 This flag causes an object already in a pack ignored 95 even if it appears in the standard input. 96 97--local:: 98 This flag is similar to `--incremental`; instead of 99 ignoring all packed objects, it only ignores objects 100 that are packed and not in the local object store 101 (i.e. borrowed from an alternate). 102 103--non-empty:: 104 Only create a packed archive if it would contain at 105 least one object. 106 107--progress:: 108 Progress status is reported on the standard error stream 109 by default when it is attached to a terminal, unless -q 110 is specified. This flag forces progress status even if 111 the standard error stream is not directed to a terminal. 112 113--all-progress:: 114 When --stdout is specified then progress report is 115 displayed during the object count and deltification phases 116 but inhibited during the write-out phase. The reason is 117 that in some cases the output stream is directly linked 118 to another command which may wish to display progress 119 status of its own as it processes incoming pack data. 120 This flag is like --progress except that it forces progress 121 report for the write-out phase as well even if --stdout is 122 used. 123 124-q:: 125 This flag makes the command not to report its progress 126 on the standard error stream. 127 128--no-reuse-delta:: 129 When creating a packed archive in a repository that 130 has existing packs, the command reuses existing deltas. 131 This sometimes results in a slightly suboptimal pack. 132 This flag tells the command not to reuse existing deltas 133 but compute them from scratch. 134 135--no-reuse-object:: 136 This flag tells the command not to reuse existing object data at all, 137 including non deltified object, forcing recompression of everything. 138 This implies --no-reuse-delta. Useful only in the obscure case where 139 wholesale enforcement of a different compression level on the 140 packed data is desired. 141 142--compression=[N]:: 143 Specifies compression level for newly-compressed data in the 144 generated pack. If not specified, pack compression level is 145 determined first by pack.compression, then by core.compression, 146 and defaults to -1, the zlib default, if neither is set. 147 Data copied from loose objects will be recompressed 148 if core.legacyheaders was true when they were created or if 149 the loose compression level (see core.loosecompression and 150 core.compression) is now a different value than the pack 151 compression level. Add --no-reuse-object if you want to force 152 a uniform compression level on all data no matter the source. 153 154--delta-base-offset:: 155 A packed archive can express base object of a delta as 156 either 20-byte object name or as an offset in the 157 stream, but older version of git does not understand the 158 latter. By default, git-pack-objects only uses the 159 former format for better compatibility. This option 160 allows the command to use the latter format for 161 compactness. Depending on the average delta chain 162 length, this option typically shrinks the resulting 163 packfile by 3-5 per-cent. 164 165--index-version=<version>[,<offset>]:: 166 This is intended to be used by the test suite only. It allows 167 to force the version for the generated pack index, and to force 168 64-bit index entries on objects located above the given offset. 169 170 171Author 172------ 173Written by Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org> 174 175Documentation 176------------- 177Documentation by Junio C Hamano 178 179See Also 180-------- 181gitlink:git-rev-list[1] 182gitlink:git-repack[1] 183gitlink:git-prune-packed[1] 184 185GIT 186--- 187Part of the gitlink:git[7] suite