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] < object-list 15 16 17DESCRIPTION 18----------- 19Reads list of objects from the standard input, and writes a packed 20archive with specified base-name, or to the standard output. 21 22A packed archive is an efficient way to transfer set of objects 23between two repositories, and also is an archival format which 24is efficient to access. The packed archive format (.pack) is 25designed to be unpackable without having anything else, but for 26random access, accompanied with the pack index file (.idx). 27 28Placing both in the pack/ subdirectory of $GIT_OBJECT_DIRECTORY (or 29any of the directories on $GIT_ALTERNATE_OBJECT_DIRECTORIES) 30enables git to read from such an archive. 31 32'git-unpack-objects' command can read the packed archive and 33expand the objects contained in the pack into "one-file 34one-object" format; this is typically done by the smart-pull 35commands when a pack is created on-the-fly for efficient network 36transport by their peers. 37 38In a packed archive, an object is either stored as a compressed 39whole, or as a difference from some other object. The latter is 40often called a delta. 41 42 43OPTIONS 44------- 45base-name:: 46 Write into a pair of files (.pack and .idx), using 47 <base-name> to determine the name of the created file. 48 When this option is used, the two files are written in 49 <base-name>-<SHA1>.{pack,idx} files. <SHA1> is a hash 50 of the sorted object names to make the resulting filename 51 based on the pack content, and written to the standard 52 output of the command. 53 54--stdout:: 55 Write the pack contents (what would have been written to 56 .pack file) out to the standard output. 57 58--revs:: 59 Read the revision arguments from the standard input, instead of 60 individual object names. The revision arguments are processed 61 the same way as linkgit:git-rev-list[1] with `--objects` flag 62 uses its `commit` arguments to build the list of objects it 63 outputs. The objects on the resulting list are packed. 64 65--unpacked:: 66 This implies `--revs`. When processing the list of 67 revision arguments read from the standard input, limit 68 the objects packed to those that are not already packed. 69 70--all:: 71 This implies `--revs`. In addition to the list of 72 revision arguments read from the standard input, pretend 73 as if all refs under `$GIT_DIR/refs` are specified to be 74 included. 75 76--window=[N], --depth=[N]:: 77 These two options affect how the objects contained in 78 the pack are stored using delta compression. The 79 objects are first internally sorted by type, size and 80 optionally names and compared against the other objects 81 within --window to see if using delta compression saves 82 space. --depth limits the maximum delta depth; making 83 it too deep affects the performance on the unpacker 84 side, because delta data needs to be applied that many 85 times to get to the necessary object. 86 The default value for --window is 10 and --depth is 50. 87 88--window-memory=[N]:: 89 This option provides an additional limit on top of `--window`; 90 the window size will dynamically scale down so as to not take 91 up more than N bytes in memory. This is useful in 92 repositories with a mix of large and small objects to not run 93 out of memory with a large window, but still be able to take 94 advantage of the large window for the smaller objects. The 95 size can be suffixed with "k", "m", or "g". 96 `--window-memory=0` makes memory usage unlimited, which is the 97 default. 98 99--max-pack-size=<n>:: 100 Maximum size of each output packfile, expressed in MiB. 101 If specified, multiple packfiles may be created. 102 The default is unlimited. 103 104--incremental:: 105 This flag causes an object already in a pack ignored 106 even if it appears in the standard input. 107 108--local:: 109 This flag is similar to `--incremental`; instead of 110 ignoring all packed objects, it only ignores objects 111 that are packed and not in the local object store 112 (i.e. borrowed from an alternate). 113 114--non-empty:: 115 Only create a packed archive if it would contain at 116 least one object. 117 118--progress:: 119 Progress status is reported on the standard error stream 120 by default when it is attached to a terminal, unless -q 121 is specified. This flag forces progress status even if 122 the standard error stream is not directed to a terminal. 123 124--all-progress:: 125 When --stdout is specified then progress report is 126 displayed during the object count and deltification phases 127 but inhibited during the write-out phase. The reason is 128 that in some cases the output stream is directly linked 129 to another command which may wish to display progress 130 status of its own as it processes incoming pack data. 131 This flag is like --progress except that it forces progress 132 report for the write-out phase as well even if --stdout is 133 used. 134 135-q:: 136 This flag makes the command not to report its progress 137 on the standard error stream. 138 139--no-reuse-delta:: 140 When creating a packed archive in a repository that 141 has existing packs, the command reuses existing deltas. 142 This sometimes results in a slightly suboptimal pack. 143 This flag tells the command not to reuse existing deltas 144 but compute them from scratch. 145 146--no-reuse-object:: 147 This flag tells the command not to reuse existing object data at all, 148 including non deltified object, forcing recompression of everything. 149 This implies --no-reuse-delta. Useful only in the obscure case where 150 wholesale enforcement of a different compression level on the 151 packed data is desired. 152 153--compression=[N]:: 154 Specifies compression level for newly-compressed data in the 155 generated pack. If not specified, pack compression level is 156 determined first by pack.compression, then by core.compression, 157 and defaults to -1, the zlib default, if neither is set. 158 Add \--no-reuse-object if you want to force a uniform compression 159 level on all data no matter the source. 160 161--delta-base-offset:: 162 A packed archive can express base object of a delta as 163 either 20-byte object name or as an offset in the 164 stream, but older version of git does not understand the 165 latter. By default, git-pack-objects only uses the 166 former format for better compatibility. This option 167 allows the command to use the latter format for 168 compactness. Depending on the average delta chain 169 length, this option typically shrinks the resulting 170 packfile by 3-5 per-cent. 171 172--threads=<n>:: 173 Specifies the number of threads to spawn when searching for best 174 delta matches. This requires that pack-objects be compiled with 175 pthreads otherwise this option is ignored with a warning. 176 This is meant to reduce packing time on multiprocessor machines. 177 The required amount of memory for the delta search window is 178 however multiplied by the number of threads. 179 180--index-version=<version>[,<offset>]:: 181 This is intended to be used by the test suite only. It allows 182 to force the version for the generated pack index, and to force 183 64-bit index entries on objects located above the given offset. 184 185 186Author 187------ 188Written by Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org> 189 190Documentation 191------------- 192Documentation by Junio C Hamano 193 194See Also 195-------- 196linkgit:git-rev-list[1] 197linkgit:git-repack[1] 198linkgit:git-prune-packed[1] 199 200GIT 201--- 202Part of the linkgit:git[7] suite