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 The default value for --window is 10 and --depth is 50. 100 101--window-memory=<n>:: 102 This option provides an additional limit on top of `--window`; 103 the window size will dynamically scale down so as to not take 104 up more than '<n>' bytes in memory. This is useful in 105 repositories with a mix of large and small objects to not run 106 out of memory with a large window, but still be able to take 107 advantage of the large window for the smaller objects. The 108 size can be suffixed with "k", "m", or "g". 109 `--window-memory=0` makes memory usage unlimited. The default 110 is taken from the `pack.windowMemory` configuration variable. 111 112--max-pack-size=<n>:: 113 In unusual scenarios, you may not be able to create files 114 larger than a certain size on your filesystem, and this option 115 can be used to tell the command to split the output packfile 116 into multiple independent packfiles, each not larger than the 117 given size. The size can be suffixed with 118 "k", "m", or "g". The minimum size allowed is limited to 1 MiB. 119 This option 120 prevents the creation of a bitmap index. 121 The default is unlimited, unless the config variable 122 `pack.packSizeLimit` is set. 123 124--honor-pack-keep:: 125 This flag causes an object already in a local pack that 126 has a .keep file to be ignored, even if it would have 127 otherwise been packed. 128 129--keep-pack=<pack-name>:: 130 This flag causes an object already in the given pack to be 131 ignored, even if it would have otherwise been 132 packed. `<pack-name>` is the the pack file name without 133 leading directory (e.g. `pack-123.pack`). The option could be 134 specified multiple times to keep multiple packs. 135 136--incremental:: 137 This flag causes an object already in a pack to be ignored 138 even if it would have otherwise been packed. 139 140--local:: 141 This flag causes an object that is borrowed from an alternate 142 object store to be ignored even if it would have otherwise been 143 packed. 144 145--non-empty:: 146 Only create a packed archive if it would contain at 147 least one object. 148 149--progress:: 150 Progress status is reported on the standard error stream 151 by default when it is attached to a terminal, unless -q 152 is specified. This flag forces progress status even if 153 the standard error stream is not directed to a terminal. 154 155--all-progress:: 156 When --stdout is specified then progress report is 157 displayed during the object count and compression phases 158 but inhibited during the write-out phase. The reason is 159 that in some cases the output stream is directly linked 160 to another command which may wish to display progress 161 status of its own as it processes incoming pack data. 162 This flag is like --progress except that it forces progress 163 report for the write-out phase as well even if --stdout is 164 used. 165 166--all-progress-implied:: 167 This is used to imply --all-progress whenever progress display 168 is activated. Unlike --all-progress this flag doesn't actually 169 force any progress display by itself. 170 171-q:: 172 This flag makes the command not to report its progress 173 on the standard error stream. 174 175--no-reuse-delta:: 176 When creating a packed archive in a repository that 177 has existing packs, the command reuses existing deltas. 178 This sometimes results in a slightly suboptimal pack. 179 This flag tells the command not to reuse existing deltas 180 but compute them from scratch. 181 182--no-reuse-object:: 183 This flag tells the command not to reuse existing object data at all, 184 including non deltified object, forcing recompression of everything. 185 This implies --no-reuse-delta. Useful only in the obscure case where 186 wholesale enforcement of a different compression level on the 187 packed data is desired. 188 189--compression=<n>:: 190 Specifies compression level for newly-compressed data in the 191 generated pack. If not specified, pack compression level is 192 determined first by pack.compression, then by core.compression, 193 and defaults to -1, the zlib default, if neither is set. 194 Add --no-reuse-object if you want to force a uniform compression 195 level on all data no matter the source. 196 197--thin:: 198 Create a "thin" pack by omitting the common objects between a 199 sender and a receiver in order to reduce network transfer. This 200 option only makes sense in conjunction with --stdout. 201+ 202Note: A thin pack violates the packed archive format by omitting 203required objects and is thus unusable by Git without making it 204self-contained. Use `git index-pack --fix-thin` 205(see linkgit:git-index-pack[1]) to restore the self-contained property. 206 207--shallow:: 208 Optimize a pack that will be provided to a client with a shallow 209 repository. This option, combined with --thin, can result in a 210 smaller pack at the cost of speed. 211 212--delta-base-offset:: 213 A packed archive can express the base object of a delta as 214 either a 20-byte object name or as an offset in the 215 stream, but ancient versions of Git don't understand the 216 latter. By default, 'git pack-objects' only uses the 217 former format for better compatibility. This option 218 allows the command to use the latter format for 219 compactness. Depending on the average delta chain 220 length, this option typically shrinks the resulting 221 packfile by 3-5 per-cent. 222+ 223Note: Porcelain commands such as `git gc` (see linkgit:git-gc[1]), 224`git repack` (see linkgit:git-repack[1]) pass this option by default 225in modern Git when they put objects in your repository into pack files. 226So does `git bundle` (see linkgit:git-bundle[1]) when it creates a bundle. 227 228--threads=<n>:: 229 Specifies the number of threads to spawn when searching for best 230 delta matches. This requires that pack-objects be compiled with 231 pthreads otherwise this option is ignored with a warning. 232 This is meant to reduce packing time on multiprocessor machines. 233 The required amount of memory for the delta search window is 234 however multiplied by the number of threads. 235 Specifying 0 will cause Git to auto-detect the number of CPU's 236 and set the number of threads accordingly. 237 238--index-version=<version>[,<offset>]:: 239 This is intended to be used by the test suite only. It allows 240 to force the version for the generated pack index, and to force 241 64-bit index entries on objects located above the given offset. 242 243--keep-true-parents:: 244 With this option, parents that are hidden by grafts are packed 245 nevertheless. 246 247--filter=<filter-spec>:: 248 Requires `--stdout`. Omits certain objects (usually blobs) from 249 the resulting packfile. See linkgit:git-rev-list[1] for valid 250 `<filter-spec>` forms. 251 252--no-filter:: 253 Turns off any previous `--filter=` argument. 254 255--missing=<missing-action>:: 256 A debug option to help with future "partial clone" development. 257 This option specifies how missing objects are handled. 258+ 259The form '--missing=error' requests that pack-objects stop with an error if 260a missing object is encountered. This is the default action. 261+ 262The form '--missing=allow-any' will allow object traversal to continue 263if a missing object is encountered. Missing objects will silently be 264omitted from the results. 265+ 266The form '--missing=allow-promisor' is like 'allow-any', but will only 267allow object traversal to continue for EXPECTED promisor missing objects. 268Unexpected missing object will raise an error. 269 270--exclude-promisor-objects:: 271 Omit objects that are known to be in the promisor remote. (This 272 option has the purpose of operating only on locally created objects, 273 so that when we repack, we still maintain a distinction between 274 locally created objects [without .promisor] and objects from the 275 promisor remote [with .promisor].) This is used with partial clone. 276 277SEE ALSO 278-------- 279linkgit:git-rev-list[1] 280linkgit:git-repack[1] 281linkgit:git-prune-packed[1] 282 283GIT 284--- 285Part of the linkgit:git[1] suite