1GIT-REPACK(1) Git Manual GIT-REPACK(1)
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6 git-repack - Pack unpacked objects in a repository
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9 git repack [-a] [-A] [-d] [-f] [-F] [-l] [-n] [-q] [-b] [-m] [--window=<n>] [--depth=<n>] [--threads=<n>] [--keep-pack=<pack-name>] [--write-midx]
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12 This command is used to combine all objects that do not currently
13 reside in a "pack", into a pack. It can also be used to re-organize
14 existing packs into a single, more efficient pack.
15 A pack is a collection of objects, individually compressed, with delta
17 compression applied, stored in a single file, with an associated index
18 file.
19 Packs are used to reduce the load on mirror systems, backup engines,
21 disk storage, etc.
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24 -a
25 Instead of incrementally packing the unpacked objects, pack
26 everything referenced into a single pack. Especially useful when
27 packing a repository that is used for private development. Use with
28 -d. This will clean up the objects that git prune leaves behind,
29 but git fsck --full --dangling shows as dangling.
30 Note that users fetching over dumb protocols will have to fetch the
32 whole new pack in order to get any contained object, no matter how
33 many other objects in that pack they already have locally.
34 Promisor packfiles are repacked separately: if there are packfiles
36 that have an associated ".promisor" file, these packfiles will be
37 repacked into another separate pack, and an empty ".promisor" file
38 corresponding to the new separate pack will be written.
39 -A
41 Same as -a, unless -d is used. Then any unreachable objects in a
42 previous pack become loose, unpacked objects, instead of being left
43 in the old pack. Unreachable objects are never intentionally added
44 to a pack, even when repacking. This option prevents unreachable
45 objects from being immediately deleted by way of being left in the
46 old pack and then removed. Instead, the loose unreachable objects
47 will be pruned according to normal expiry rules with the next git
48 gc invocation. See git-gc(1).
49 -d
51 After packing, if the newly created packs make some existing packs
52 redundant, remove the redundant packs. Also run git prune-packed to
53 remove redundant loose object files.
54 --cruft
56 Same as -a, unless -d is used. Then any unreachable objects are
57 packed into a separate cruft pack. Unreachable objects can be
58 pruned using the normal expiry rules with the next git gc
59 invocation (see git-gc(1)). Incompatible with -k.
60 --cruft-expiration=<approxidate>
62 Expire unreachable objects older than <approxidate> immediately
63 instead of waiting for the next git gc invocation. Only useful with
64 --cruft -d.
65 --expire-to=<dir>
67 Write a cruft pack containing pruned objects (if any) to the
68 directory <dir>. This option is useful for keeping a copy of any
69 pruned objects in a separate directory as a backup. Only useful
70 with --cruft -d.
71 -l
73 Pass the --local option to git pack-objects. See git-pack-
74 objects(1).
75 -f
77 Pass the --no-reuse-delta option to git-pack-objects, see git-pack-
78 objects(1).
79 -F
81 Pass the --no-reuse-object option to git-pack-objects, see git-
82 pack-objects(1).
83 -q, --quiet
85 Show no progress over the standard error stream and pass the -q
86 option to git pack-objects. See git-pack-objects(1).
87 -n
89 Do not update the server information with git update-server-info.
90 This option skips updating local catalog files needed to publish
91 this repository (or a direct copy of it) over HTTP or FTP. See git-
92 update-server-info(1).
93 --window=<n>, --depth=<n>
95 These two options affect how the objects contained in the pack are
96 stored using delta compression. The objects are first internally
97 sorted by type, size and optionally names and compared against the
98 other objects within --window to see if using delta compression
99 saves space. --depth limits the maximum delta depth; making it too
100 deep affects the performance on the unpacker side, because delta
101 data needs to be applied that many times to get to the necessary
102 object.
103 The default value for --window is 10 and --depth is 50. The maximum
105 depth is 4095.
106 --threads=<n>
108 This option is passed through to git pack-objects.
109 --window-memory=<n>
111 This option provides an additional limit on top of --window; the
112 window size will dynamically scale down so as to not take up more
113 than <n> bytes in memory. This is useful in repositories with a mix
114 of large and small objects to not run out of memory with a large
115 window, but still be able to take advantage of the large window for
116 the smaller objects. The size can be suffixed with "k", "m", or
117 "g". --window-memory=0 makes memory usage unlimited. The default
118 is taken from the pack.windowMemory configuration variable. Note
119 that the actual memory usage will be the limit multiplied by the
120 number of threads used by git-pack-objects(1).
121 --max-pack-size=<n>
123 Maximum size of each output pack file. The size can be suffixed
124 with "k", "m", or "g". The minimum size allowed is limited to 1
125 MiB. If specified, multiple packfiles may be created, which also
126 prevents the creation of a bitmap index. The default is unlimited,
127 unless the config variable pack.packSizeLimit is set. Note that
128 this option may result in a larger and slower repository; see the
129 discussion in pack.packSizeLimit.
130 -b, --write-bitmap-index
132 Write a reachability bitmap index as part of the repack. This only
133 makes sense when used with -a, -A or -m, as the bitmaps must be
134 able to refer to all reachable objects. This option overrides the
135 setting of repack.writeBitmaps. This option has no effect if
136 multiple packfiles are created, unless writing a MIDX (in which
137 case a multi-pack bitmap is created).
138 --pack-kept-objects
140 Include objects in .keep files when repacking. Note that we still
141 do not delete .keep packs after pack-objects finishes. This means
142 that we may duplicate objects, but this makes the option safe to
143 use when there are concurrent pushes or fetches. This option is
144 generally only useful if you are writing bitmaps with -b or
145 repack.writeBitmaps, as it ensures that the bitmapped packfile has
146 the necessary objects.
147 --keep-pack=<pack-name>
149 Exclude the given pack from repacking. This is the equivalent of
150 having .keep file on the pack. <pack-name> is the pack file name
151 without leading directory (e.g. pack-123.pack). The option could
152 be specified multiple times to keep multiple packs.
153 --unpack-unreachable=<when>
155 When loosening unreachable objects, do not bother loosening any
156 objects older than <when>. This can be used to optimize out the
157 write of any objects that would be immediately pruned by a
158 follow-up git prune.
159 -k, --keep-unreachable
161 When used with -ad, any unreachable objects from existing packs
162 will be appended to the end of the packfile instead of being
163 removed. In addition, any unreachable loose objects will be packed
164 (and their loose counterparts removed).
165 -i, --delta-islands
167 Pass the --delta-islands option to git-pack-objects, see git-pack-
168 objects(1).
169 -g=<factor>, --geometric=<factor>
171 Arrange resulting pack structure so that each successive pack
172 contains at least <factor> times the number of objects as the
173 next-largest pack.
174 git repack ensures this by determining a "cut" of packfiles that
176 need to be repacked into one in order to ensure a geometric
177 progression. It picks the smallest set of packfiles such that as
178 many of the larger packfiles (by count of objects contained in that
179 pack) may be left intact.
180 Unlike other repack modes, the set of objects to pack is determined
182 uniquely by the set of packs being "rolled-up"; in other words, the
183 packs determined to need to be combined in order to restore a
184 geometric progression.
185 When --unpacked is specified, loose objects are implicitly included
187 in this "roll-up", without respect to their reachability. This is
188 subject to change in the future. This option (implying a
189 drastically different repack mode) is not guaranteed to work with
190 all other combinations of option to git repack.
191 When writing a multi-pack bitmap, git repack selects the largest
193 resulting pack as the preferred pack for object selection by the
194 MIDX (see git-multi-pack-index(1)).
195 -m, --write-midx
197 Write a multi-pack index (see git-multi-pack-index(1)) containing
198 the non-redundant packs.
199
201 Various configuration variables affect packing, see git-config(1)
202 (search for "pack" and "delta").
203 By default, the command passes --delta-base-offset option to git
205 pack-objects; this typically results in slightly smaller packs, but the
206 generated packs are incompatible with versions of Git older than
207 version 1.4.4. If you need to share your repository with such ancient
208 Git versions, either directly or via the dumb http protocol, then you
209 need to set the configuration variable repack.UseDeltaBaseOffset to
210 "false" and repack. Access from old Git versions over the native
211 protocol is unaffected by this option as the conversion is performed on
212 the fly as needed in that case.
213 Delta compression is not used on objects larger than the
215 core.bigFileThreshold configuration variable and on files with the
216 attribute delta set to false.
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219 git-pack-objects(1) git-prune-packed(1)
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222 Part of the git(1) suite
223Git 2.39.1 2023-01-13 GIT-REPACK(1)