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