Documentation / git-pack-objects.txton commit Merge branch 'jc/deprecate-recursive' (e38604e)
   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] [--non-empty]
  13        [--local] [--incremental] [--window=N] [--depth=N]
  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
  28'git-unpack-objects' command can read the packed archive and
  29expand the objects contained in the pack into "one-file
  30one-object" format; this is typically done by the smart-pull
  31commands when a pack is created on-the-fly for efficient network
  32transport by their peers.
  33
  34Placing both in the pack/ subdirectory of $GIT_OBJECT_DIRECTORY (or
  35any of the directories on $GIT_ALTERNATE_OBJECT_DIRECTORIES)
  36enables git to read from such an archive.
  37
  38In a packed archive, an object is either stored as a compressed
  39whole, or as a difference from some other object.  The latter is
  40often called a delta.
  41
  42
  43OPTIONS
  44-------
  45base-name::
  46        Write into a pair of files (.pack and .idx), using
  47        <base-name> to determine the name of the created file.
  48        When this option is used, the two files are written in
  49        <base-name>-<SHA1>.{pack,idx} files.  <SHA1> is a hash
  50        of object names (currently in random order so it does
  51        not have any useful meaning) to make the resulting
  52        filename reasonably unique, and written to the standard
  53        output of the command.
  54
  55--stdout::
  56        Write the pack contents (what would have been written to
  57        .pack file) out to the standard output.
  58
  59--revs::
  60        Read the revision arguments from the standard input, instead of
  61        individual object names.  The revision arguments are processed
  62        the same way as gitlink:git-rev-list[1] with `--objects` flag
  63        uses its `commit` arguments to build the list of objects it
  64        outputs.  The objects on the resulting list are packed.
  65
  66--unpacked::
  67        This implies `--revs`.  When processing the list of
  68        revision arguments read from the standard input, limit
  69        the objects packed to those that are not already packed.
  70
  71--all::
  72        This implies `--revs`.  In addition to the list of
  73        revision arguments read from the standard input, pretend
  74        as if all refs under `$GIT_DIR/refs` are specifed to be
  75        included.
  76
  77--window and --depth::
  78        These two options affects how the objects contained in
  79        the pack are stored using delta compression.  The
  80        objects are first internally sorted by type, size and
  81        optionally names and compared against the other objects
  82        within --window to see if using delta compression saves
  83        space.  --depth limits the maximum delta depth; making
  84        it too deep affects the performance on the unpacker
  85        side, because delta data needs to be applied that many
  86        times to get to the necessary object.
  87
  88--incremental::
  89        This flag causes an object already in a pack ignored
  90        even if it appears in the standard input.
  91
  92--local::
  93        This flag is similar to `--incremental`; instead of
  94        ignoring all packed objects, it only ignores objects
  95        that are packed and not in the local object store
  96        (i.e. borrowed from an alternate).
  97
  98--non-empty::
  99        Only create a packed archive if it would contain at
 100        least one object.
 101
 102-q::
 103        This flag makes the command not to report its progress
 104        on the standard error stream.
 105
 106--no-reuse-delta::
 107        When creating a packed archive in a repository that
 108        has existing packs, the command reuses existing deltas.
 109        This sometimes results in a slightly suboptimal pack.
 110        This flag tells the command not to reuse existing deltas
 111        but compute them from scratch.
 112
 113
 114Author
 115------
 116Written by Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
 117
 118Documentation
 119-------------
 120Documentation by Junio C Hamano
 121
 122See Also
 123--------
 124gitlink:git-rev-list[1]
 125gitlink:git-repack[1]
 126gitlink:git-prune-packed[1]
 127
 128GIT
 129---
 130Part of the gitlink:git[7] suite
 131