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