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] 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 specified to be 75 included. 76 77--window=[N], --depth=[N]:: 78 These two options affect 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 The default value for both --window and --depth is 10. 88 89--incremental:: 90 This flag causes an object already in a pack ignored 91 even if it appears in the standard input. 92 93--local:: 94 This flag is similar to `--incremental`; instead of 95 ignoring all packed objects, it only ignores objects 96 that are packed and not in the local object store 97 (i.e. borrowed from an alternate). 98 99--non-empty:: 100 Only create a packed archive if it would contain at 101 least one object. 102 103-q:: 104 This flag makes the command not to report its progress 105 on the standard error stream. 106 107--no-reuse-delta:: 108 When creating a packed archive in a repository that 109 has existing packs, the command reuses existing deltas. 110 This sometimes results in a slightly suboptimal pack. 111 This flag tells the command not to reuse existing deltas 112 but compute them from scratch. 113 114--delta-base-offset:: 115 A packed archive can express base object of a delta as 116 either 20-byte object name or as an offset in the 117 stream, but older version of git does not understand the 118 latter. By default, git-pack-objects only uses the 119 former format for better compatibility. This option 120 allows the command to use the latter format for 121 compactness. Depending on the average delta chain 122 length, this option typically shrinks the resulting 123 packfile by 3-5 per-cent. 124 125 126Author 127------ 128Written by Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org> 129 130Documentation 131------------- 132Documentation by Junio C Hamano 133 134See Also 135-------- 136gitlink:git-rev-list[1] 137gitlink:git-repack[1] 138gitlink:git-prune-packed[1] 139 140GIT 141--- 142Part of the gitlink:git[7] suite 143