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 | --progress | --all-progress] [--all-progress-implied] 13 [--no-reuse-delta] [--delta-base-offset] [--non-empty] 14 [--local] [--incremental] [--window=<n>] [--depth=<n>] 15 [--revs [--unpacked | --all]] [--keep-pack=<pack-name>] 16 [--stdout [--filter=<filter-spec>] | base-name] 17 [--shallow] [--keep-true-parents] < object-list 18 19 20DESCRIPTION 21----------- 22Reads list of objects from the standard input, and writes either one or 23more packed archives with the specified base-name to disk, or a packed 24archive to the standard output. 25 26A packed archive is an efficient way to transfer a set of objects 27between two repositories as well as an access efficient archival 28format. In a packed archive, an object is either stored as a 29compressed whole or as a difference from some other object. 30The latter is often called a delta. 31 32The packed archive format (.pack) is designed to be self-contained 33so that it can be unpacked without any further information. Therefore, 34each object that a delta depends upon must be present within the pack. 35 36A pack index file (.idx) is generated for fast, random access to the 37objects in the pack. Placing both the index file (.idx) and the packed 38archive (.pack) in the pack/ subdirectory of $GIT_OBJECT_DIRECTORY (or 39any of the directories on $GIT_ALTERNATE_OBJECT_DIRECTORIES) 40enables Git to read from the pack archive. 41 42The 'git unpack-objects' command can read the packed archive and 43expand the objects contained in the pack into "one-file 44one-object" format; this is typically done by the smart-pull 45commands when a pack is created on-the-fly for efficient network 46transport by their peers. 47 48 49OPTIONS 50------- 51base-name:: 52 Write into pairs of files (.pack and .idx), using 53 <base-name> to determine the name of the created file. 54 When this option is used, the two files in a pair are written in 55 <base-name>-<SHA-1>.{pack,idx} files. <SHA-1> is a hash 56 based on the pack content and is written to the standard 57 output of the command. 58 59--stdout:: 60 Write the pack contents (what would have been written to 61 .pack file) out to the standard output. 62 63--revs:: 64 Read the revision arguments from the standard input, instead of 65 individual object names. The revision arguments are processed 66 the same way as 'git rev-list' with the `--objects` flag 67 uses its `commit` arguments to build the list of objects it 68 outputs. The objects on the resulting list are packed. 69 Besides revisions, `--not` or `--shallow <SHA-1>` lines are 70 also accepted. 71 72--unpacked:: 73 This implies `--revs`. When processing the list of 74 revision arguments read from the standard input, limit 75 the objects packed to those that are not already packed. 76 77--all:: 78 This implies `--revs`. In addition to the list of 79 revision arguments read from the standard input, pretend 80 as if all refs under `refs/` are specified to be 81 included. 82 83--include-tag:: 84 Include unasked-for annotated tags if the object they 85 reference was included in the resulting packfile. This 86 can be useful to send new tags to native Git clients. 87 88--window=<n>:: 89--depth=<n>:: 90 These two options affect how the objects contained in 91 the pack are stored using delta compression. The 92 objects are first internally sorted by type, size and 93 optionally names and compared against the other objects 94 within --window to see if using delta compression saves 95 space. --depth limits the maximum delta depth; making 96 it too deep affects the performance on the unpacker 97 side, because delta data needs to be applied that many 98 times to get to the necessary object. 99+ 100The default value for --window is 10 and --depth is 50. The maximum 101depth is 4095. 102 103--window-memory=<n>:: 104 This option provides an additional limit on top of `--window`; 105 the window size will dynamically scale down so as to not take 106 up more than '<n>' bytes in memory. This is useful in 107 repositories with a mix of large and small objects to not run 108 out of memory with a large window, but still be able to take 109 advantage of the large window for the smaller objects. The 110 size can be suffixed with "k", "m", or "g". 111 `--window-memory=0` makes memory usage unlimited. The default 112 is taken from the `pack.windowMemory` configuration variable. 113 114--max-pack-size=<n>:: 115 In unusual scenarios, you may not be able to create files 116 larger than a certain size on your filesystem, and this option 117 can be used to tell the command to split the output packfile 118 into multiple independent packfiles, each not larger than the 119 given size. The size can be suffixed with 120 "k", "m", or "g". The minimum size allowed is limited to 1 MiB. 121 This option 122 prevents the creation of a bitmap index. 123 The default is unlimited, unless the config variable 124 `pack.packSizeLimit` is set. 125 126--honor-pack-keep:: 127 This flag causes an object already in a local pack that 128 has a .keep file to be ignored, even if it would have 129 otherwise been packed. 130 131--keep-pack=<pack-name>:: 132 This flag causes an object already in the given pack to be 133 ignored, even if it would have otherwise been 134 packed. `<pack-name>` is the the pack file name without 135 leading directory (e.g. `pack-123.pack`). The option could be 136 specified multiple times to keep multiple packs. 137 138--incremental:: 139 This flag causes an object already in a pack to be ignored 140 even if it would have otherwise been packed. 141 142--local:: 143 This flag causes an object that is borrowed from an alternate 144 object store to be ignored even if it would have otherwise been 145 packed. 146 147--non-empty:: 148 Only create a packed archive if it would contain at 149 least one object. 150 151--progress:: 152 Progress status is reported on the standard error stream 153 by default when it is attached to a terminal, unless -q 154 is specified. This flag forces progress status even if 155 the standard error stream is not directed to a terminal. 156 157--all-progress:: 158 When --stdout is specified then progress report is 159 displayed during the object count and compression phases 160 but inhibited during the write-out phase. The reason is 161 that in some cases the output stream is directly linked 162 to another command which may wish to display progress 163 status of its own as it processes incoming pack data. 164 This flag is like --progress except that it forces progress 165 report for the write-out phase as well even if --stdout is 166 used. 167 168--all-progress-implied:: 169 This is used to imply --all-progress whenever progress display 170 is activated. Unlike --all-progress this flag doesn't actually 171 force any progress display by itself. 172 173-q:: 174 This flag makes the command not to report its progress 175 on the standard error stream. 176 177--no-reuse-delta:: 178 When creating a packed archive in a repository that 179 has existing packs, the command reuses existing deltas. 180 This sometimes results in a slightly suboptimal pack. 181 This flag tells the command not to reuse existing deltas 182 but compute them from scratch. 183 184--no-reuse-object:: 185 This flag tells the command not to reuse existing object data at all, 186 including non deltified object, forcing recompression of everything. 187 This implies --no-reuse-delta. Useful only in the obscure case where 188 wholesale enforcement of a different compression level on the 189 packed data is desired. 190 191--compression=<n>:: 192 Specifies compression level for newly-compressed data in the 193 generated pack. If not specified, pack compression level is 194 determined first by pack.compression, then by core.compression, 195 and defaults to -1, the zlib default, if neither is set. 196 Add --no-reuse-object if you want to force a uniform compression 197 level on all data no matter the source. 198 199--thin:: 200 Create a "thin" pack by omitting the common objects between a 201 sender and a receiver in order to reduce network transfer. This 202 option only makes sense in conjunction with --stdout. 203+ 204Note: A thin pack violates the packed archive format by omitting 205required objects and is thus unusable by Git without making it 206self-contained. Use `git index-pack --fix-thin` 207(see linkgit:git-index-pack[1]) to restore the self-contained property. 208 209--shallow:: 210 Optimize a pack that will be provided to a client with a shallow 211 repository. This option, combined with --thin, can result in a 212 smaller pack at the cost of speed. 213 214--delta-base-offset:: 215 A packed archive can express the base object of a delta as 216 either a 20-byte object name or as an offset in the 217 stream, but ancient versions of Git don't understand the 218 latter. By default, 'git pack-objects' only uses the 219 former format for better compatibility. This option 220 allows the command to use the latter format for 221 compactness. Depending on the average delta chain 222 length, this option typically shrinks the resulting 223 packfile by 3-5 per-cent. 224+ 225Note: Porcelain commands such as `git gc` (see linkgit:git-gc[1]), 226`git repack` (see linkgit:git-repack[1]) pass this option by default 227in modern Git when they put objects in your repository into pack files. 228So does `git bundle` (see linkgit:git-bundle[1]) when it creates a bundle. 229 230--threads=<n>:: 231 Specifies the number of threads to spawn when searching for best 232 delta matches. This requires that pack-objects be compiled with 233 pthreads otherwise this option is ignored with a warning. 234 This is meant to reduce packing time on multiprocessor machines. 235 The required amount of memory for the delta search window is 236 however multiplied by the number of threads. 237 Specifying 0 will cause Git to auto-detect the number of CPU's 238 and set the number of threads accordingly. 239 240--index-version=<version>[,<offset>]:: 241 This is intended to be used by the test suite only. It allows 242 to force the version for the generated pack index, and to force 243 64-bit index entries on objects located above the given offset. 244 245--keep-true-parents:: 246 With this option, parents that are hidden by grafts are packed 247 nevertheless. 248 249--filter=<filter-spec>:: 250 Requires `--stdout`. Omits certain objects (usually blobs) from 251 the resulting packfile. See linkgit:git-rev-list[1] for valid 252 `<filter-spec>` forms. 253 254--no-filter:: 255 Turns off any previous `--filter=` argument. 256 257--missing=<missing-action>:: 258 A debug option to help with future "partial clone" development. 259 This option specifies how missing objects are handled. 260+ 261The form '--missing=error' requests that pack-objects stop with an error if 262a missing object is encountered. This is the default action. 263+ 264The form '--missing=allow-any' will allow object traversal to continue 265if a missing object is encountered. Missing objects will silently be 266omitted from the results. 267+ 268The form '--missing=allow-promisor' is like 'allow-any', but will only 269allow object traversal to continue for EXPECTED promisor missing objects. 270Unexpected missing object will raise an error. 271 272--exclude-promisor-objects:: 273 Omit objects that are known to be in the promisor remote. (This 274 option has the purpose of operating only on locally created objects, 275 so that when we repack, we still maintain a distinction between 276 locally created objects [without .promisor] and objects from the 277 promisor remote [with .promisor].) This is used with partial clone. 278 279--keep-unreachable:: 280 Objects unreachable from the refs in packs named with 281 --unpacked= option are added to the resulting pack, in 282 addition to the reachable objects that are not in packs marked 283 with *.keep files. This implies `--revs`. 284 285--pack-loose-unreachable:: 286 Pack unreachable loose objects (and their loose counterparts 287 removed). This implies `--revs`. 288 289--unpack-unreachable:: 290 Keep unreachable objects in loose form. This implies `--revs`. 291 292SEE ALSO 293-------- 294linkgit:git-rev-list[1] 295linkgit:git-repack[1] 296linkgit:git-prune-packed[1] 297 298GIT 299--- 300Part of the linkgit:git[1] suite