1GIT-PACK-OBJECTS(1)               Git Manual               GIT-PACK-OBJECTS(1)
2
3
4

NAME

6       git-pack-objects - Create a packed archive of objects
7

SYNOPSIS

9       git pack-objects [-q | --progress | --all-progress] [--all-progress-implied]
10               [--no-reuse-delta] [--delta-base-offset] [--non-empty]
11               [--local] [--incremental] [--window=<n>] [--depth=<n>]
12               [--revs [--unpacked | --all]] [--keep-pack=<pack-name>]
13               [--stdout [--filter=<filter-spec>] | base-name]
14               [--shallow] [--keep-true-parents] < object-list
15
16

DESCRIPTION

18       Reads list of objects from the standard input, and writes either one or
19       more packed archives with the specified base-name to disk, or a packed
20       archive to the standard output.
21
22       A packed archive is an efficient way to transfer a set of objects
23       between two repositories as well as an access efficient archival
24       format. In a packed archive, an object is either stored as a compressed
25       whole or as a difference from some other object. The latter is often
26       called a delta.
27
28       The packed archive format (.pack) is designed to be self-contained so
29       that it can be unpacked without any further information. Therefore,
30       each object that a delta depends upon must be present within the pack.
31
32       A pack index file (.idx) is generated for fast, random access to the
33       objects in the pack. Placing both the index file (.idx) and the packed
34       archive (.pack) in the pack/ subdirectory of $GIT_OBJECT_DIRECTORY (or
35       any of the directories on $GIT_ALTERNATE_OBJECT_DIRECTORIES) enables
36       Git to read from the pack archive.
37
38       The git unpack-objects command can read the packed archive and expand
39       the objects contained in the pack into "one-file one-object" format;
40       this is typically done by the smart-pull commands when a pack is
41       created on-the-fly for efficient network transport by their peers.
42

OPTIONS

44       base-name
45           Write into pairs of files (.pack and .idx), using <base-name> to
46           determine the name of the created file. When this option is used,
47           the two files in a pair are written in
48           <base-name>-<SHA-1>.{pack,idx} files. <SHA-1> is a hash based on
49           the pack content and is written to the standard output of the
50           command.
51
52       --stdout
53           Write the pack contents (what would have been written to .pack
54           file) out to the standard output.
55
56       --revs
57           Read the revision arguments from the standard input, instead of
58           individual object names. The revision arguments are processed the
59           same way as git rev-list with the --objects flag uses its commit
60           arguments to build the list of objects it outputs. The objects on
61           the resulting list are packed. Besides revisions, --not or
62           --shallow <SHA-1> lines are also accepted.
63
64       --unpacked
65           This implies --revs. When processing the list of revision arguments
66           read from the standard input, limit the objects packed to those
67           that are not already packed.
68
69       --all
70           This implies --revs. In addition to the list of revision arguments
71           read from the standard input, pretend as if all refs under refs/
72           are specified to be included.
73
74       --include-tag
75           Include unasked-for annotated tags if the object they reference was
76           included in the resulting packfile. This can be useful to send new
77           tags to native Git clients.
78
79       --window=<n>, --depth=<n>
80           These two options affect how the objects contained in the pack are
81           stored using delta compression. The objects are first internally
82           sorted by type, size and optionally names and compared against the
83           other objects within --window to see if using delta compression
84           saves space. --depth limits the maximum delta depth; making it too
85           deep affects the performance on the unpacker side, because delta
86           data needs to be applied that many times to get to the necessary
87           object.
88
89           The default value for --window is 10 and --depth is 50. The maximum
90           depth is 4095.
91
92       --window-memory=<n>
93           This option provides an additional limit on top of --window; the
94           window size will dynamically scale down so as to not take up more
95           than <n> bytes in memory. This is useful in repositories with a mix
96           of large and small objects to not run out of memory with a large
97           window, but still be able to take advantage of the large window for
98           the smaller objects. The size can be suffixed with "k", "m", or
99           "g".  --window-memory=0 makes memory usage unlimited. The default
100           is taken from the pack.windowMemory configuration variable.
101
102       --max-pack-size=<n>
103           In unusual scenarios, you may not be able to create files larger
104           than a certain size on your filesystem, and this option can be used
105           to tell the command to split the output packfile into multiple
106           independent packfiles, each not larger than the given size. The
107           size can be suffixed with "k", "m", or "g". The minimum size
108           allowed is limited to 1 MiB. This option prevents the creation of a
109           bitmap index. The default is unlimited, unless the config variable
110           pack.packSizeLimit is set.
111
112       --honor-pack-keep
113           This flag causes an object already in a local pack that has a .keep
114           file to be ignored, even if it would have otherwise been packed.
115
116       --keep-pack=<pack-name>
117           This flag causes an object already in the given pack to be ignored,
118           even if it would have otherwise been packed.  <pack-name> is the
119           the pack file name without leading directory (e.g.  pack-123.pack).
120           The option could be specified multiple times to keep multiple
121           packs.
122
123       --incremental
124           This flag causes an object already in a pack to be ignored even if
125           it would have otherwise been packed.
126
127       --local
128           This flag causes an object that is borrowed from an alternate
129           object store to be ignored even if it would have otherwise been
130           packed.
131
132       --non-empty
133           Only create a packed archive if it would contain at least one
134           object.
135
136       --progress
137           Progress status is reported on the standard error stream by default
138           when it is attached to a terminal, unless -q is specified. This
139           flag forces progress status even if the standard error stream is
140           not directed to a terminal.
141
142       --all-progress
143           When --stdout is specified then progress report is displayed during
144           the object count and compression phases but inhibited during the
145           write-out phase. The reason is that in some cases the output stream
146           is directly linked to another command which may wish to display
147           progress status of its own as it processes incoming pack data. This
148           flag is like --progress except that it forces progress report for
149           the write-out phase as well even if --stdout is used.
150
151       --all-progress-implied
152           This is used to imply --all-progress whenever progress display is
153           activated. Unlike --all-progress this flag doesn’t actually force
154           any progress display by itself.
155
156       -q
157           This flag makes the command not to report its progress on the
158           standard error stream.
159
160       --no-reuse-delta
161           When creating a packed archive in a repository that has existing
162           packs, the command reuses existing deltas. This sometimes results
163           in a slightly suboptimal pack. This flag tells the command not to
164           reuse existing deltas but compute them from scratch.
165
166       --no-reuse-object
167           This flag tells the command not to reuse existing object data at
168           all, including non deltified object, forcing recompression of
169           everything. This implies --no-reuse-delta. Useful only in the
170           obscure case where wholesale enforcement of a different compression
171           level on the packed data is desired.
172
173       --compression=<n>
174           Specifies compression level for newly-compressed data in the
175           generated pack. If not specified, pack compression level is
176           determined first by pack.compression, then by core.compression, and
177           defaults to -1, the zlib default, if neither is set. Add
178           --no-reuse-object if you want to force a uniform compression level
179           on all data no matter the source.
180
181       --thin
182           Create a "thin" pack by omitting the common objects between a
183           sender and a receiver in order to reduce network transfer. This
184           option only makes sense in conjunction with --stdout.
185
186           Note: A thin pack violates the packed archive format by omitting
187           required objects and is thus unusable by Git without making it
188           self-contained. Use git index-pack --fix-thin (see git-index-
189           pack(1)) to restore the self-contained property.
190
191       --shallow
192           Optimize a pack that will be provided to a client with a shallow
193           repository. This option, combined with --thin, can result in a
194           smaller pack at the cost of speed.
195
196       --delta-base-offset
197           A packed archive can express the base object of a delta as either a
198           20-byte object name or as an offset in the stream, but ancient
199           versions of Git don’t understand the latter. By default, git
200           pack-objects only uses the former format for better compatibility.
201           This option allows the command to use the latter format for
202           compactness. Depending on the average delta chain length, this
203           option typically shrinks the resulting packfile by 3-5 per-cent.
204
205           Note: Porcelain commands such as git gc (see git-gc(1)), git repack
206           (see git-repack(1)) pass this option by default in modern Git when
207           they put objects in your repository into pack files. So does git
208           bundle (see git-bundle(1)) when it creates a bundle.
209
210       --threads=<n>
211           Specifies the number of threads to spawn when searching for best
212           delta matches. This requires that pack-objects be compiled with
213           pthreads otherwise this option is ignored with a warning. This is
214           meant to reduce packing time on multiprocessor machines. The
215           required amount of memory for the delta search window is however
216           multiplied by the number of threads. Specifying 0 will cause Git to
217           auto-detect the number of CPU’s and set the number of threads
218           accordingly.
219
220       --index-version=<version>[,<offset>]
221           This is intended to be used by the test suite only. It allows to
222           force the version for the generated pack index, and to force 64-bit
223           index entries on objects located above the given offset.
224
225       --keep-true-parents
226           With this option, parents that are hidden by grafts are packed
227           nevertheless.
228
229       --filter=<filter-spec>
230           Requires --stdout. Omits certain objects (usually blobs) from the
231           resulting packfile. See git-rev-list(1) for valid <filter-spec>
232           forms.
233
234       --no-filter
235           Turns off any previous --filter= argument.
236
237       --missing=<missing-action>
238           A debug option to help with future "partial clone" development.
239           This option specifies how missing objects are handled.
240
241           The form --missing=error requests that pack-objects stop with an
242           error if a missing object is encountered. This is the default
243           action.
244
245           The form --missing=allow-any will allow object traversal to
246           continue if a missing object is encountered. Missing objects will
247           silently be omitted from the results.
248
249           The form --missing=allow-promisor is like allow-any, but will only
250           allow object traversal to continue for EXPECTED promisor missing
251           objects. Unexpected missing object will raise an error.
252
253       --exclude-promisor-objects
254           Omit objects that are known to be in the promisor remote. (This
255           option has the purpose of operating only on locally created
256           objects, so that when we repack, we still maintain a distinction
257           between locally created objects [without .promisor] and objects
258           from the promisor remote [with .promisor].) This is used with
259           partial clone.
260
261       --keep-unreachable
262           Objects unreachable from the refs in packs named with --unpacked=
263           option are added to the resulting pack, in addition to the
264           reachable objects that are not in packs marked with *.keep files.
265           This implies --revs.
266
267       --pack-loose-unreachable
268           Pack unreachable loose objects (and their loose counterparts
269           removed). This implies --revs.
270
271       --unpack-unreachable
272           Keep unreachable objects in loose form. This implies --revs.
273

SEE ALSO

275       git-rev-list(1) git-repack(1) git-prune-packed(1)
276

GIT

278       Part of the git(1) suite
279
280
281
282Git 2.18.1                        05/14/2019               GIT-PACK-OBJECTS(1)
Impressum