6 git-pack-objects - Create a packed archive of objects
12 'git pack-objects' [-q | --progress | --all-progress] [--all-progress-implied]
13 [--no-reuse-delta] [--delta-base-offset] [--non-empty]
14 [--local] [--incremental] [--window=N] [--depth=N]
15 [--revs [--unpacked | --all]*] [--stdout | base-name]
16 [--keep-true-parents] < object-list
21 Reads list of objects from the standard input, and writes a packed
22 archive with specified base-name, or to the standard output.
24 A packed archive is an efficient way to transfer set of objects
25 between two repositories, and also is an archival format which
26 is efficient to access. The packed archive format (.pack) is
27 designed to be self contained so that it can be unpacked without
28 any further information, but for fast, random access to the objects
29 in the pack, a pack index file (.idx) will be generated.
31 Placing both in the pack/ subdirectory of $GIT_OBJECT_DIRECTORY (or
32 any of the directories on $GIT_ALTERNATE_OBJECT_DIRECTORIES)
33 enables git to read from such an archive.
35 The 'git-unpack-objects' command can read the packed archive and
36 expand the objects contained in the pack into "one-file
37 one-object" format; this is typically done by the smart-pull
38 commands when a pack is created on-the-fly for efficient network
39 transport by their peers.
41 In a packed archive, an object is either stored as a compressed
42 whole, or as a difference from some other object. The latter is
49 Write into a pair of files (.pack and .idx), using
50 <base-name> to determine the name of the created file.
51 When this option is used, the two files are written in
52 <base-name>-<SHA1>.{pack,idx} files. <SHA1> is a hash
53 of the sorted object names to make the resulting filename
54 based on the pack content, and written to the standard
55 output of the command.
58 Write the pack contents (what would have been written to
59 .pack file) out to the standard output.
62 Read the revision arguments from the standard input, instead of
63 individual object names. The revision arguments are processed
64 the same way as 'git-rev-list' with the `--objects` flag
65 uses its `commit` arguments to build the list of objects it
66 outputs. The objects on the resulting list are packed.
69 This implies `--revs`. When processing the list of
70 revision arguments read from the standard input, limit
71 the objects packed to those that are not already packed.
74 This implies `--revs`. In addition to the list of
75 revision arguments read from the standard input, pretend
76 as if all refs under `$GIT_DIR/refs` are specified to be
80 Include unasked-for annotated tags if the object they
81 reference was included in the resulting packfile. This
82 can be useful to send new tags to native git clients.
86 These two options affect how the objects contained in
87 the pack are stored using delta compression. The
88 objects are first internally sorted by type, size and
89 optionally names and compared against the other objects
90 within --window to see if using delta compression saves
91 space. --depth limits the maximum delta depth; making
92 it too deep affects the performance on the unpacker
93 side, because delta data needs to be applied that many
94 times to get to the necessary object.
95 The default value for --window is 10 and --depth is 50.
98 This option provides an additional limit on top of `--window`;
99 the window size will dynamically scale down so as to not take
100 up more than N bytes in memory. This is useful in
101 repositories with a mix of large and small objects to not run
102 out of memory with a large window, but still be able to take
103 advantage of the large window for the smaller objects. The
104 size can be suffixed with "k", "m", or "g".
105 `--window-memory=0` makes memory usage unlimited, which is the
108 --max-pack-size=<n>::
109 Maximum size of each output packfile, expressed in MiB.
110 If specified, multiple packfiles may be created.
111 The default is unlimited, unless the config variable
112 `pack.packSizeLimit` is set.
115 This flag causes an object already in a local pack that
116 has a .keep file to be ignored, even if it appears in the
120 This flag causes an object already in a pack ignored
121 even if it appears in the standard input.
124 This flag is similar to `--incremental`; instead of
125 ignoring all packed objects, it only ignores objects
126 that are packed and/or not in the local object store
127 (i.e. borrowed from an alternate).
130 Only create a packed archive if it would contain at
134 Progress status is reported on the standard error stream
135 by default when it is attached to a terminal, unless -q
136 is specified. This flag forces progress status even if
137 the standard error stream is not directed to a terminal.
140 When --stdout is specified then progress report is
141 displayed during the object count and compression phases
142 but inhibited during the write-out phase. The reason is
143 that in some cases the output stream is directly linked
144 to another command which may wish to display progress
145 status of its own as it processes incoming pack data.
146 This flag is like --progress except that it forces progress
147 report for the write-out phase as well even if --stdout is
150 --all-progress-implied::
151 This is used to imply --all-progress whenever progress display
152 is activated. Unlike --all-progress this flag doesn't actually
153 force any progress display by itself.
156 This flag makes the command not to report its progress
157 on the standard error stream.
160 When creating a packed archive in a repository that
161 has existing packs, the command reuses existing deltas.
162 This sometimes results in a slightly suboptimal pack.
163 This flag tells the command not to reuse existing deltas
164 but compute them from scratch.
167 This flag tells the command not to reuse existing object data at all,
168 including non deltified object, forcing recompression of everything.
169 This implies --no-reuse-delta. Useful only in the obscure case where
170 wholesale enforcement of a different compression level on the
171 packed data is desired.
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,
177 and defaults to -1, the zlib default, if neither is set.
178 Add --no-reuse-object if you want to force a uniform compression
179 level on all data no matter the source.
181 --delta-base-offset::
182 A packed archive can express base object of a delta as
183 either 20-byte object name or as an offset in the
184 stream, but older version of git does not understand the
185 latter. By default, 'git-pack-objects' only uses the
186 former format for better compatibility. This option
187 allows the command to use the latter format for
188 compactness. Depending on the average delta chain
189 length, this option typically shrinks the resulting
190 packfile by 3-5 per-cent.
193 Specifies the number of threads to spawn when searching for best
194 delta matches. This requires that pack-objects be compiled with
195 pthreads otherwise this option is ignored with a warning.
196 This is meant to reduce packing time on multiprocessor machines.
197 The required amount of memory for the delta search window is
198 however multiplied by the number of threads.
199 Specifying 0 will cause git to auto-detect the number of CPU's
200 and set the number of threads accordingly.
202 --index-version=<version>[,<offset>]::
203 This is intended to be used by the test suite only. It allows
204 to force the version for the generated pack index, and to force
205 64-bit index entries on objects located above the given offset.
207 --keep-true-parents::
208 With this option, parents that are hidden by grafts are packed
214 Written by Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
218 Documentation by Junio C Hamano
222 linkgit:git-rev-list[1]
223 linkgit:git-repack[1]
224 linkgit:git-prune-packed[1]
228 Part of the linkgit:git[1] suite
projects / git / blob