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 [--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>-<SHA1>.{pack,idx} files. <SHA1> is a hash 54 of the sorted object names to make the resulting filename 55 based on the pack content, and 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 69--unpacked:: 70 This implies `--revs`. When processing the list of 71 revision arguments read from the standard input, limit 72 the objects packed to those that are not already packed. 73 74--all:: 75 This implies `--revs`. In addition to the list of 76 revision arguments read from the standard input, pretend 77 as if all refs under `refs/` are specified to be 78 included. 79 80--include-tag:: 81 Include unasked-for annotated tags if the object they 82 reference was included in the resulting packfile. This 83 can be useful to send new tags to native Git clients. 84 85--window=<n>:: 86--depth=<n>:: 87 These two options affect how the objects contained in 88 the pack are stored using delta compression. The 89 objects are first internally sorted by type, size and 90 optionally names and compared against the other objects 91 within --window to see if using delta compression saves 92 space. --depth limits the maximum delta depth; making 93 it too deep affects the performance on the unpacker 94 side, because delta data needs to be applied that many 95 times to get to the necessary object. 96 The default value for --window is 10 and --depth is 50. 97 98--window-memory=<n>:: 99 This option provides an additional limit on top of `--window`; 100 the window size will dynamically scale down so as to not take 101 up more than '<n>' bytes in memory. This is useful in 102 repositories with a mix of large and small objects to not run 103 out of memory with a large window, but still be able to take 104 advantage of the large window for the smaller objects. The 105 size can be suffixed with "k", "m", or "g". 106 `--window-memory=0` makes memory usage unlimited, which is the 107 default. 108 109--max-pack-size=<n>:: 110 Maximum size of each output pack file. The size can be suffixed with 111 "k", "m", or "g". The minimum size allowed is limited to 1 MiB. 112 If specified, multiple packfiles may be created. 113 The default is unlimited, unless the config variable 114 `pack.packSizeLimit` is set. 115 116--honor-pack-keep:: 117 This flag causes an object already in a local pack that 118 has a .keep file to be ignored, even if it would have 119 otherwise been packed. 120 121--incremental:: 122 This flag causes an object already in a pack to be ignored 123 even if it would have otherwise been packed. 124 125--local:: 126 This flag causes an object that is borrowed from an alternate 127 object store to be ignored even if it would have otherwise been 128 packed. 129 130--non-empty:: 131 Only create a packed archive if it would contain at 132 least one object. 133 134--progress:: 135 Progress status is reported on the standard error stream 136 by default when it is attached to a terminal, unless -q 137 is specified. This flag forces progress status even if 138 the standard error stream is not directed to a terminal. 139 140--all-progress:: 141 When --stdout is specified then progress report is 142 displayed during the object count and compression phases 143 but inhibited during the write-out phase. The reason is 144 that in some cases the output stream is directly linked 145 to another command which may wish to display progress 146 status of its own as it processes incoming pack data. 147 This flag is like --progress except that it forces progress 148 report for the write-out phase as well even if --stdout is 149 used. 150 151--all-progress-implied:: 152 This is used to imply --all-progress whenever progress display 153 is activated. Unlike --all-progress this flag doesn't actually 154 force any progress display by itself. 155 156-q:: 157 This flag makes the command not to report its progress 158 on the standard error stream. 159 160--no-reuse-delta:: 161 When creating a packed archive in a repository that 162 has existing packs, the command reuses existing deltas. 163 This sometimes results in a slightly suboptimal pack. 164 This flag tells the command not to reuse existing deltas 165 but compute them from scratch. 166 167--no-reuse-object:: 168 This flag tells the command not to reuse existing object data at all, 169 including non deltified object, forcing recompression of everything. 170 This implies --no-reuse-delta. Useful only in the obscure case where 171 wholesale enforcement of a different compression level on the 172 packed data is desired. 173 174--compression=<n>:: 175 Specifies compression level for newly-compressed data in the 176 generated pack. If not specified, pack compression level is 177 determined first by pack.compression, then by core.compression, 178 and defaults to -1, the zlib default, if neither is set. 179 Add --no-reuse-object if you want to force a uniform compression 180 level on all data no matter the source. 181 182--thin:: 183 Create a "thin" pack by omitting the common objects between a 184 sender and a receiver in order to reduce network transfer. This 185 option only makes sense in conjunction with --stdout. 186+ 187Note: A thin pack violates the packed archive format by omitting 188required objects and is thus unusable by Git without making it 189self-contained. Use `git index-pack --fix-thin` 190(see linkgit:git-index-pack[1]) to restore the self-contained property. 191 192--delta-base-offset:: 193 A packed archive can express the base object of a delta as 194 either a 20-byte object name or as an offset in the 195 stream, but ancient versions of Git don't understand the 196 latter. By default, 'git pack-objects' only uses the 197 former format for better compatibility. This option 198 allows the command to use the latter format for 199 compactness. Depending on the average delta chain 200 length, this option typically shrinks the resulting 201 packfile by 3-5 per-cent. 202+ 203Note: Porcelain commands such as `git gc` (see linkgit:git-gc[1]), 204`git repack` (see linkgit:git-repack[1]) pass this option by default 205in modern Git when they put objects in your repository into pack files. 206So does `git bundle` (see linkgit:git-bundle[1]) when it creates a bundle. 207 208--threads=<n>:: 209 Specifies the number of threads to spawn when searching for best 210 delta matches. This requires that pack-objects be compiled with 211 pthreads otherwise this option is ignored with a warning. 212 This is meant to reduce packing time on multiprocessor machines. 213 The required amount of memory for the delta search window is 214 however multiplied by the number of threads. 215 Specifying 0 will cause Git to auto-detect the number of CPU's 216 and set the number of threads accordingly. 217 218--index-version=<version>[,<offset>]:: 219 This is intended to be used by the test suite only. It allows 220 to force the version for the generated pack index, and to force 221 64-bit index entries on objects located above the given offset. 222 223--keep-true-parents:: 224 With this option, parents that are hidden by grafts are packed 225 nevertheless. 226 227SEE ALSO 228-------- 229linkgit:git-rev-list[1] 230linkgit:git-repack[1] 231linkgit:git-prune-packed[1] 232 233GIT 234--- 235Part of the linkgit:git[1] suite