git-pack-objects.txt

git-pack-objects(1)
===================

NAME
----
git-pack-objects - Create a packed archive of objects


SYNOPSIS
--------
[verse]
'git-pack-objects' [-q] [--no-reuse-delta] [--non-empty]
[--local] [--incremental] [--window=N] [--depth=N]
{--stdout | base-name} < object-list


DESCRIPTION
-----------
Reads list of objects from the standard input, and writes a packed
archive with specified base-name, or to the standard output.

A packed archive is an efficient way to transfer set of objects
between two repositories, and also is an archival format which
is efficient to access. The packed archive format (.pack) is
designed to be unpackable without having anything else, but for
random access, accompanied with the pack index file (.idx).

'git-unpack-objects' command can read the packed archive and
expand the objects contained in the pack into "one-file
one-object" format; this is typically done by the smart-pull
commands when a pack is created on-the-fly for efficient network
transport by their peers.

Placing both in the pack/ subdirectory of $GIT_OBJECT_DIRECTORY (or
any of the directories on $GIT_ALTERNATE_OBJECT_DIRECTORIES)
enables git to read from such an archive.

In a packed archive, an object is either stored as a compressed
whole, or as a difference from some other object. The latter is
often called a delta.


OPTIONS
-------
base-name::
Write into a pair of files (.pack and .idx), using
<base-name> to determine the name of the created file.
When this option is used, the two files are written in
<base-name>-<SHA1>.{pack,idx} files. <SHA1> is a hash
of object names (currently in random order so it does
not have any useful meaning) to make the resulting
filename reasonably unique, and written to the standard
output of the command.

--stdout::
Write the pack contents (what would have been written to
.pack file) out to the standard output.

--window and --depth::
These two options affects how the objects contained in
the pack are stored using delta compression. The
objects are first internally sorted by type, size and
optionally names and compared against the other objects
within --window to see if using delta compression saves
space. --depth limits the maximum delta depth; making
it too deep affects the performance on the unpacker
side, because delta data needs to be applied that many
times to get to the necessary object.

--incremental::
This flag causes an object already in a pack ignored
even if it appears in the standard input.

--local::
This flag is similar to `--incremental`; instead of
ignoring all packed objects, it only ignores objects
that are packed and not in the local object store
(i.e. borrowed from an alternate).

--non-empty::
 Only create a packed archive if it would contain at
 least one object.

-q::
This flag makes the command not to report its progress
on the standard error stream.

--no-reuse-delta::
When creating a packed archive in a repository that
has existing packs, the command reuses existing deltas.
This sometimes results in a slightly suboptimal pack.
This flag tells the command not to reuse existing deltas
but compute them from scratch.


Author
------
Written by Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>

Documentation
-------------
Documentation by Junio C Hamano

See Also
--------
gitlink:git-repack[1]
gitlink:git-prune-packed[1]

GIT
---
Part of the gitlink:git[7] suite