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]*] [--stdout | base-name] 16 [--keep-true-parents] < object-list 17 18 19DESCRIPTION 20----------- 21Reads list of objects from the standard input, and writes a packed 22archive with specified base-name, or to the standard output. 23 24A packed archive is an efficient way to transfer set of objects 25between two repositories, and also is an archival format which 26is efficient to access. The packed archive format (.pack) is 27designed to be self contained so that it can be unpacked without 28any further information, but for fast, random access to the objects 29in the pack, a pack index file (.idx) will be generated. 30 31Placing both in the pack/ subdirectory of $GIT_OBJECT_DIRECTORY (or 32any of the directories on $GIT_ALTERNATE_OBJECT_DIRECTORIES) 33enables git to read from such an archive. 34 35The 'git unpack-objects' command can read the packed archive and 36expand the objects contained in the pack into "one-file 37one-object" format; this is typically done by the smart-pull 38commands when a pack is created on-the-fly for efficient network 39transport by their peers. 40 41In a packed archive, an object is either stored as a compressed 42whole, or as a difference from some other object. The latter is 43often called a delta. 44 45 46OPTIONS 47------- 48base-name:: 49 Write into a pair of files (.pack and .idx), using 50 <base-name> to determine the name of the created file. 51 When this option is used, the two files are written in 52 <base-name>-<SHA1>.{pack,idx} files. <SHA1> is a hash 53 of the sorted object names to make the resulting filename 54 based on the pack content, and written to the standard 55 output of the command. 56 57--stdout:: 58 Write the pack contents (what would have been written to 59 .pack file) out to the standard output. 60 61--revs:: 62 Read the revision arguments from the standard input, instead of 63 individual object names. The revision arguments are processed 64 the same way as 'git rev-list' with the `--objects` flag 65 uses its `commit` arguments to build the list of objects it 66 outputs. The objects on the resulting list are packed. 67 68--unpacked:: 69 This implies `--revs`. When processing the list of 70 revision arguments read from the standard input, limit 71 the objects packed to those that are not already packed. 72 73--all:: 74 This implies `--revs`. In addition to the list of 75 revision arguments read from the standard input, pretend 76 as if all refs under `$GIT_DIR/refs` are specified to be 77 included. 78 79--include-tag:: 80 Include unasked-for annotated tags if the object they 81 reference was included in the resulting packfile. This 82 can be useful to send new tags to native git clients. 83 84--window=[N]:: 85--depth=[N]:: 86 These two options affect how the objects contained in 87 the pack are stored using delta compression. The 88 objects are first internally sorted by type, size and 89 optionally names and compared against the other objects 90 within --window to see if using delta compression saves 91 space. --depth limits the maximum delta depth; making 92 it too deep affects the performance on the unpacker 93 side, because delta data needs to be applied that many 94 times to get to the necessary object. 95 The default value for --window is 10 and --depth is 50. 96 97--window-memory=[N]:: 98 This option provides an additional limit on top of `--window`; 99 the window size will dynamically scale down so as to not take 100 up more than N bytes in memory. This is useful in 101 repositories with a mix of large and small objects to not run 102 out of memory with a large window, but still be able to take 103 advantage of the large window for the smaller objects. The 104 size can be suffixed with "k", "m", or "g". 105 `--window-memory=0` makes memory usage unlimited, which is the 106 default. 107 108--max-pack-size=<n>:: 109 Maximum size of each output packfile, expressed in MiB. 110 If specified, multiple packfiles may be created. 111 The default is unlimited, unless the config variable 112 `pack.packSizeLimit` is set. 113 114--honor-pack-keep:: 115 This flag causes an object already in a local pack that 116 has a .keep file to be ignored, even if it appears in the 117 standard input. 118 119--incremental:: 120 This flag causes an object already in a pack ignored 121 even if it appears in the standard input. 122 123--local:: 124 This flag is similar to `--incremental`; instead of 125 ignoring all packed objects, it only ignores objects 126 that are packed and/or not in the local object store 127 (i.e. borrowed from an alternate). 128 129--non-empty:: 130 Only create a packed archive if it would contain at 131 least one object. 132 133--progress:: 134 Progress status is reported on the standard error stream 135 by default when it is attached to a terminal, unless -q 136 is specified. This flag forces progress status even if 137 the standard error stream is not directed to a terminal. 138 139--all-progress:: 140 When --stdout is specified then progress report is 141 displayed during the object count and compression phases 142 but inhibited during the write-out phase. The reason is 143 that in some cases the output stream is directly linked 144 to another command which may wish to display progress 145 status of its own as it processes incoming pack data. 146 This flag is like --progress except that it forces progress 147 report for the write-out phase as well even if --stdout is 148 used. 149 150--all-progress-implied:: 151 This is used to imply --all-progress whenever progress display 152 is activated. Unlike --all-progress this flag doesn't actually 153 force any progress display by itself. 154 155-q:: 156 This flag makes the command not to report its progress 157 on the standard error stream. 158 159--no-reuse-delta:: 160 When creating a packed archive in a repository that 161 has existing packs, the command reuses existing deltas. 162 This sometimes results in a slightly suboptimal pack. 163 This flag tells the command not to reuse existing deltas 164 but compute them from scratch. 165 166--no-reuse-object:: 167 This flag tells the command not to reuse existing object data at all, 168 including non deltified object, forcing recompression of everything. 169 This implies --no-reuse-delta. Useful only in the obscure case where 170 wholesale enforcement of a different compression level on the 171 packed data is desired. 172 173--compression=[N]:: 174 Specifies compression level for newly-compressed data in the 175 generated pack. If not specified, pack compression level is 176 determined first by pack.compression, then by core.compression, 177 and defaults to -1, the zlib default, if neither is set. 178 Add --no-reuse-object if you want to force a uniform compression 179 level on all data no matter the source. 180 181--delta-base-offset:: 182 A packed archive can express base object of a delta as 183 either 20-byte object name or as an offset in the 184 stream, but older version of git does not understand the 185 latter. By default, 'git pack-objects' only uses the 186 former format for better compatibility. This option 187 allows the command to use the latter format for 188 compactness. Depending on the average delta chain 189 length, this option typically shrinks the resulting 190 packfile by 3-5 per-cent. 191 192--threads=<n>:: 193 Specifies the number of threads to spawn when searching for best 194 delta matches. This requires that pack-objects be compiled with 195 pthreads otherwise this option is ignored with a warning. 196 This is meant to reduce packing time on multiprocessor machines. 197 The required amount of memory for the delta search window is 198 however multiplied by the number of threads. 199 Specifying 0 will cause git to auto-detect the number of CPU's 200 and set the number of threads accordingly. 201 202--index-version=<version>[,<offset>]:: 203 This is intended to be used by the test suite only. It allows 204 to force the version for the generated pack index, and to force 205 64-bit index entries on objects located above the given offset. 206 207--keep-true-parents:: 208 With this option, parents that are hidden by grafts are packed 209 nevertheless. 210 211 212Author 213------ 214Written by Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org> 215 216Documentation 217------------- 218Documentation by Junio C Hamano 219 220SEE ALSO 221-------- 222linkgit:git-rev-list[1] 223linkgit:git-repack[1] 224linkgit:git-prune-packed[1] 225 226GIT 227--- 228Part of the linkgit:git[1] suite