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, which is the 108 default. 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. 114 The default is unlimited, unless the config variable 115 `pack.packSizeLimit` is set. 116 117--honor-pack-keep:: 118 This flag causes an object already in a local pack that 119 has a .keep file to be ignored, even if it would have 120 otherwise been packed. 121 122--incremental:: 123 This flag causes an object already in a pack to be ignored 124 even if it would have otherwise been packed. 125 126--local:: 127 This flag causes an object that is borrowed from an alternate 128 object store to be ignored even if it would have otherwise been 129 packed. 130 131--non-empty:: 132 Only create a packed archive if it would contain at 133 least one object. 134 135--progress:: 136 Progress status is reported on the standard error stream 137 by default when it is attached to a terminal, unless -q 138 is specified. This flag forces progress status even if 139 the standard error stream is not directed to a terminal. 140 141--all-progress:: 142 When --stdout is specified then progress report is 143 displayed during the object count and compression phases 144 but inhibited during the write-out phase. The reason is 145 that in some cases the output stream is directly linked 146 to another command which may wish to display progress 147 status of its own as it processes incoming pack data. 148 This flag is like --progress except that it forces progress 149 report for the write-out phase as well even if --stdout is 150 used. 151 152--all-progress-implied:: 153 This is used to imply --all-progress whenever progress display 154 is activated. Unlike --all-progress this flag doesn't actually 155 force any progress display by itself. 156 157-q:: 158 This flag makes the command not to report its progress 159 on the standard error stream. 160 161--no-reuse-delta:: 162 When creating a packed archive in a repository that 163 has existing packs, the command reuses existing deltas. 164 This sometimes results in a slightly suboptimal pack. 165 This flag tells the command not to reuse existing deltas 166 but compute them from scratch. 167 168--no-reuse-object:: 169 This flag tells the command not to reuse existing object data at all, 170 including non deltified object, forcing recompression of everything. 171 This implies --no-reuse-delta. Useful only in the obscure case where 172 wholesale enforcement of a different compression level on the 173 packed data is desired. 174 175--compression=<n>:: 176 Specifies compression level for newly-compressed data in the 177 generated pack. If not specified, pack compression level is 178 determined first by pack.compression, then by core.compression, 179 and defaults to -1, the zlib default, if neither is set. 180 Add --no-reuse-object if you want to force a uniform compression 181 level on all data no matter the source. 182 183--thin:: 184 Create a "thin" pack by omitting the common objects between a 185 sender and a receiver in order to reduce network transfer. This 186 option only makes sense in conjunction with --stdout. 187+ 188Note: A thin pack violates the packed archive format by omitting 189required objects and is thus unusable by Git without making it 190self-contained. Use `git index-pack --fix-thin` 191(see linkgit:git-index-pack[1]) to restore the self-contained property. 192 193--shallow:: 194 Optimize a pack that will be provided to a client with a shallow 195 repository. This option, combined with --thin, can result in a 196 smaller pack at the cost of speed. 197 198--delta-base-offset:: 199 A packed archive can express the base object of a delta as 200 either a 20-byte object name or as an offset in the 201 stream, but ancient versions of Git don't understand the 202 latter. By default, 'git pack-objects' only uses the 203 former format for better compatibility. This option 204 allows the command to use the latter format for 205 compactness. Depending on the average delta chain 206 length, this option typically shrinks the resulting 207 packfile by 3-5 per-cent. 208+ 209Note: Porcelain commands such as `git gc` (see linkgit:git-gc[1]), 210`git repack` (see linkgit:git-repack[1]) pass this option by default 211in modern Git when they put objects in your repository into pack files. 212So does `git bundle` (see linkgit:git-bundle[1]) when it creates a bundle. 213 214--threads=<n>:: 215 Specifies the number of threads to spawn when searching for best 216 delta matches. This requires that pack-objects be compiled with 217 pthreads otherwise this option is ignored with a warning. 218 This is meant to reduce packing time on multiprocessor machines. 219 The required amount of memory for the delta search window is 220 however multiplied by the number of threads. 221 Specifying 0 will cause Git to auto-detect the number of CPU's 222 and set the number of threads accordingly. 223 224--index-version=<version>[,<offset>]:: 225 This is intended to be used by the test suite only. It allows 226 to force the version for the generated pack index, and to force 227 64-bit index entries on objects located above the given offset. 228 229--keep-true-parents:: 230 With this option, parents that are hidden by grafts are packed 231 nevertheless. 232 233SEE ALSO 234-------- 235linkgit:git-rev-list[1] 236linkgit:git-repack[1] 237linkgit:git-prune-packed[1] 238 239GIT 240--- 241Part of the linkgit:git[1] suite