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--include-tag:: 77 Include unasked-for annotated tags if the object they 78 reference was included in the resulting packfile. This 79 can be useful to send new tags to native git clients. 80 81--window=[N], --depth=[N]:: 82 These two options affect how the objects contained in 83 the pack are stored using delta compression. The 84 objects are first internally sorted by type, size and 85 optionally names and compared against the other objects 86 within --window to see if using delta compression saves 87 space. --depth limits the maximum delta depth; making 88 it too deep affects the performance on the unpacker 89 side, because delta data needs to be applied that many 90 times to get to the necessary object. 91 The default value for --window is 10 and --depth is 50. 92 93--window-memory=[N]:: 94 This option provides an additional limit on top of `--window`; 95 the window size will dynamically scale down so as to not take 96 up more than N bytes in memory. This is useful in 97 repositories with a mix of large and small objects to not run 98 out of memory with a large window, but still be able to take 99 advantage of the large window for the smaller objects. The 100 size can be suffixed with "k", "m", or "g". 101 `--window-memory=0` makes memory usage unlimited, which is the 102 default. 103 104--max-pack-size=<n>:: 105 Maximum size of each output packfile, expressed in MiB. 106 If specified, multiple packfiles may be created. 107 The default is unlimited, unless the config variable 108 `pack.packSizeLimit` is set. 109 110--incremental:: 111 This flag causes an object already in a pack ignored 112 even if it appears in the standard input. 113 114--local:: 115 This flag is similar to `--incremental`; instead of 116 ignoring all packed objects, it only ignores objects 117 that are packed and not in the local object store 118 (i.e. borrowed from an alternate). 119 120--non-empty:: 121 Only create a packed archive if it would contain at 122 least one object. 123 124--progress:: 125 Progress status is reported on the standard error stream 126 by default when it is attached to a terminal, unless -q 127 is specified. This flag forces progress status even if 128 the standard error stream is not directed to a terminal. 129 130--all-progress:: 131 When --stdout is specified then progress report is 132 displayed during the object count and deltification phases 133 but inhibited during the write-out phase. The reason is 134 that in some cases the output stream is directly linked 135 to another command which may wish to display progress 136 status of its own as it processes incoming pack data. 137 This flag is like --progress except that it forces progress 138 report for the write-out phase as well even if --stdout is 139 used. 140 141-q:: 142 This flag makes the command not to report its progress 143 on the standard error stream. 144 145--no-reuse-delta:: 146 When creating a packed archive in a repository that 147 has existing packs, the command reuses existing deltas. 148 This sometimes results in a slightly suboptimal pack. 149 This flag tells the command not to reuse existing deltas 150 but compute them from scratch. 151 152--no-reuse-object:: 153 This flag tells the command not to reuse existing object data at all, 154 including non deltified object, forcing recompression of everything. 155 This implies --no-reuse-delta. Useful only in the obscure case where 156 wholesale enforcement of a different compression level on the 157 packed data is desired. 158 159--compression=[N]:: 160 Specifies compression level for newly-compressed data in the 161 generated pack. If not specified, pack compression level is 162 determined first by pack.compression, then by core.compression, 163 and defaults to -1, the zlib default, if neither is set. 164 Add \--no-reuse-object if you want to force a uniform compression 165 level on all data no matter the source. 166 167--delta-base-offset:: 168 A packed archive can express base object of a delta as 169 either 20-byte object name or as an offset in the 170 stream, but older version of git does not understand the 171 latter. By default, git-pack-objects only uses the 172 former format for better compatibility. This option 173 allows the command to use the latter format for 174 compactness. Depending on the average delta chain 175 length, this option typically shrinks the resulting 176 packfile by 3-5 per-cent. 177 178--threads=<n>:: 179 Specifies the number of threads to spawn when searching for best 180 delta matches. This requires that pack-objects be compiled with 181 pthreads otherwise this option is ignored with a warning. 182 This is meant to reduce packing time on multiprocessor machines. 183 The required amount of memory for the delta search window is 184 however multiplied by the number of threads. 185 Specifying 0 will cause git to auto-detect the number of CPU's 186 and set the number of threads accordingly. 187 188--index-version=<version>[,<offset>]:: 189 This is intended to be used by the test suite only. It allows 190 to force the version for the generated pack index, and to force 191 64-bit index entries on objects located above the given offset. 192 193 194Author 195------ 196Written by Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org> 197 198Documentation 199------------- 200Documentation by Junio C Hamano 201 202See Also 203-------- 204linkgit:git-rev-list[1] 205linkgit:git-repack[1] 206linkgit:git-prune-packed[1] 207 208GIT 209--- 210Part of the linkgit:git[7] suite