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] [--no-reuse-delta] [--delta-base-offset] [--non-empty] 13 [--local] [--incremental] [--window=N] [--depth=N] [--all-progress] 14 [--revs [--unpacked | --all]*] [--stdout | base-name] 15 [--keep-true-parents] < object-list 16 17 18DESCRIPTION 19----------- 20Reads list of objects from the standard input, and writes a packed 21archive with specified base-name, or to the standard output. 22 23A packed archive is an efficient way to transfer set of objects 24between two repositories, and also is an archival format which 25is efficient to access. The packed archive format (.pack) is 26designed to be self contained so that it can be unpacked without 27any further information, but for fast, random access to the objects 28in the pack, a pack index file (.idx) will be generated. 29 30Placing both in the pack/ subdirectory of $GIT_OBJECT_DIRECTORY (or 31any of the directories on $GIT_ALTERNATE_OBJECT_DIRECTORIES) 32enables git to read from such an archive. 33 34The 'git-unpack-objects' command can read the packed archive and 35expand the objects contained in the pack into "one-file 36one-object" format; this is typically done by the smart-pull 37commands when a pack is created on-the-fly for efficient network 38transport by their peers. 39 40In a packed archive, an object is either stored as a compressed 41whole, or as a difference from some other object. The latter is 42often called a delta. 43 44 45OPTIONS 46------- 47base-name:: 48 Write into a pair of files (.pack and .idx), using 49 <base-name> to determine the name of the created file. 50 When this option is used, the two files are written in 51 <base-name>-<SHA1>.{pack,idx} files. <SHA1> is a hash 52 of the sorted object names to make the resulting filename 53 based on the pack content, and written to the standard 54 output of the command. 55 56--stdout:: 57 Write the pack contents (what would have been written to 58 .pack file) out to the standard output. 59 60--revs:: 61 Read the revision arguments from the standard input, instead of 62 individual object names. The revision arguments are processed 63 the same way as 'git-rev-list' with the `--objects` flag 64 uses its `commit` arguments to build the list of objects it 65 outputs. The objects on the resulting list are packed. 66 67--unpacked:: 68 This implies `--revs`. When processing the list of 69 revision arguments read from the standard input, limit 70 the objects packed to those that are not already packed. 71 72--all:: 73 This implies `--revs`. In addition to the list of 74 revision arguments read from the standard input, pretend 75 as if all refs under `$GIT_DIR/refs` are specified to be 76 included. 77 78--include-tag:: 79 Include unasked-for annotated tags if the object they 80 reference was included in the resulting packfile. This 81 can be useful to send new tags to native git clients. 82 83--window=[N]:: 84--depth=[N]:: 85 These two options affect how the objects contained in 86 the pack are stored using delta compression. The 87 objects are first internally sorted by type, size and 88 optionally names and compared against the other objects 89 within --window to see if using delta compression saves 90 space. --depth limits the maximum delta depth; making 91 it too deep affects the performance on the unpacker 92 side, because delta data needs to be applied that many 93 times to get to the necessary object. 94 The default value for --window is 10 and --depth is 50. 95 96--window-memory=[N]:: 97 This option provides an additional limit on top of `--window`; 98 the window size will dynamically scale down so as to not take 99 up more than N bytes in memory. This is useful in 100 repositories with a mix of large and small objects to not run 101 out of memory with a large window, but still be able to take 102 advantage of the large window for the smaller objects. The 103 size can be suffixed with "k", "m", or "g". 104 `--window-memory=0` makes memory usage unlimited, which is the 105 default. 106 107--max-pack-size=<n>:: 108 Maximum size of each output packfile, expressed in MiB. 109 If specified, multiple packfiles may be created. 110 The default is unlimited, unless the config variable 111 `pack.packSizeLimit` is set. 112 113--honor-pack-keep:: 114 This flag causes an object already in a local pack that 115 has a .keep file to be ignored, even if it appears in the 116 standard input. 117 118--incremental:: 119 This flag causes an object already in a pack ignored 120 even if it appears in the standard input. 121 122--local:: 123 This flag is similar to `--incremental`; instead of 124 ignoring all packed objects, it only ignores objects 125 that are packed and/or not in the local object store 126 (i.e. borrowed from an alternate). 127 128--non-empty:: 129 Only create a packed archive if it would contain at 130 least one object. 131 132--progress:: 133 Progress status is reported on the standard error stream 134 by default when it is attached to a terminal, unless -q 135 is specified. This flag forces progress status even if 136 the standard error stream is not directed to a terminal. 137 138--all-progress:: 139 When --stdout is specified then progress report is 140 displayed during the object count and deltification phases 141 but inhibited during the write-out phase. The reason is 142 that in some cases the output stream is directly linked 143 to another command which may wish to display progress 144 status of its own as it processes incoming pack data. 145 This flag is like --progress except that it forces progress 146 report for the write-out phase as well even if --stdout is 147 used. 148 149-q:: 150 This flag makes the command not to report its progress 151 on the standard error stream. 152 153--no-reuse-delta:: 154 When creating a packed archive in a repository that 155 has existing packs, the command reuses existing deltas. 156 This sometimes results in a slightly suboptimal pack. 157 This flag tells the command not to reuse existing deltas 158 but compute them from scratch. 159 160--no-reuse-object:: 161 This flag tells the command not to reuse existing object data at all, 162 including non deltified object, forcing recompression of everything. 163 This implies --no-reuse-delta. Useful only in the obscure case where 164 wholesale enforcement of a different compression level on the 165 packed data is desired. 166 167--compression=[N]:: 168 Specifies compression level for newly-compressed data in the 169 generated pack. If not specified, pack compression level is 170 determined first by pack.compression, then by core.compression, 171 and defaults to -1, the zlib default, if neither is set. 172 Add --no-reuse-object if you want to force a uniform compression 173 level on all data no matter the source. 174 175--delta-base-offset:: 176 A packed archive can express base object of a delta as 177 either 20-byte object name or as an offset in the 178 stream, but older version of git does not understand the 179 latter. By default, 'git-pack-objects' only uses the 180 former format for better compatibility. This option 181 allows the command to use the latter format for 182 compactness. Depending on the average delta chain 183 length, this option typically shrinks the resulting 184 packfile by 3-5 per-cent. 185 186--threads=<n>:: 187 Specifies the number of threads to spawn when searching for best 188 delta matches. This requires that pack-objects be compiled with 189 pthreads otherwise this option is ignored with a warning. 190 This is meant to reduce packing time on multiprocessor machines. 191 The required amount of memory for the delta search window is 192 however multiplied by the number of threads. 193 Specifying 0 will cause git to auto-detect the number of CPU's 194 and set the number of threads accordingly. 195 196--index-version=<version>[,<offset>]:: 197 This is intended to be used by the test suite only. It allows 198 to force the version for the generated pack index, and to force 199 64-bit index entries on objects located above the given offset. 200 201--keep-true-parents:: 202 With this option, parents that are hidden by grafts are packed 203 nevertheless. 204 205 206Author 207------ 208Written by Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org> 209 210Documentation 211------------- 212Documentation by Junio C Hamano 213 214SEE ALSO 215-------- 216linkgit:git-rev-list[1] 217linkgit:git-repack[1] 218linkgit:git-prune-packed[1] 219 220GIT 221--- 222Part of the linkgit:git[1] suite