noble (1) git-repack.1.gz

NAME

       git-repack - Pack unpacked objects in a repository

SYNOPSIS

       git repack [-a] [-A] [-d] [-f] [-F] [-l] [-n] [-q] [-b] [-m] [--window=<n>] [--depth=<n>] [--threads=<n>] [--keep-pack=<pack-name>] [--write-midx]

DESCRIPTION

       This command is used to combine all objects that do not currently reside in a "pack", into a pack. It can
       also be used to re-organize existing packs into a single, more efficient pack.

       A pack is a collection of objects, individually compressed, with delta compression applied, stored in a
       single file, with an associated index file.

       Packs are used to reduce the load on mirror systems, backup engines, disk storage, etc.

OPTIONS

       -a
           Instead of incrementally packing the unpacked objects, pack everything referenced into a single pack.
           Especially useful when packing a repository that is used for private development. Use with -d. This
           will clean up the objects that git prune leaves behind, but git fsck --full --dangling shows as
           dangling.

           Note that users fetching over dumb protocols will have to fetch the whole new pack in order to get
           any contained object, no matter how many other objects in that pack they already have locally.

           Promisor packfiles are repacked separately: if there are packfiles that have an associated
           ".promisor" file, these packfiles will be repacked into another separate pack, and an empty
           ".promisor" file corresponding to the new separate pack will be written.

       -A
           Same as -a, unless -d is used. Then any unreachable objects in a previous pack become loose, unpacked
           objects, instead of being left in the old pack. Unreachable objects are never intentionally added to
           a pack, even when repacking. This option prevents unreachable objects from being immediately deleted
           by way of being left in the old pack and then removed. Instead, the loose unreachable objects will be
           pruned according to normal expiry rules with the next git gc invocation. See git-gc(1).

       -d
           After packing, if the newly created packs make some existing packs redundant, remove the redundant
           packs. Also run git prune-packed to remove redundant loose object files.

       --cruft
           Same as -a, unless -d is used. Then any unreachable objects are packed into a separate cruft pack.
           Unreachable objects can be pruned using the normal expiry rules with the next git gc invocation (see
           git-gc(1)). Incompatible with -k.

       --cruft-expiration=<approxidate>
           Expire unreachable objects older than <approxidate> immediately instead of waiting for the next git
           gc invocation. Only useful with --cruft -d.

       --max-cruft-size=<n>
           Repack cruft objects into packs as large as <n> bytes before creating new packs. As long as there are
           enough cruft packs smaller than <n>, repacking will cause a new cruft pack to be created containing
           objects from any combined cruft packs, along with any new unreachable objects. Cruft packs larger
           than <n> will not be modified. When the new cruft pack is larger than <n> bytes, it will be split
           into multiple packs, all of which are guaranteed to be at most <n> bytes in size. Only useful with
           --cruft -d.

       --expire-to=<dir>
           Write a cruft pack containing pruned objects (if any) to the directory <dir>. This option is useful
           for keeping a copy of any pruned objects in a separate directory as a backup. Only useful with
           --cruft -d.

       -l
           Pass the --local option to git pack-objects. See git-pack-objects(1).

       -f
           Pass the --no-reuse-delta option to git-pack-objects, see git-pack-objects(1).

       -F
           Pass the --no-reuse-object option to git-pack-objects, see git-pack-objects(1).

       -q, --quiet
           Show no progress over the standard error stream and pass the -q option to git pack-objects. See git-
           pack-objects(1).

       -n
           Do not update the server information with git update-server-info. This option skips updating local
           catalog files needed to publish this repository (or a direct copy of it) over HTTP or FTP. See git-
           update-server-info(1).

       --window=<n>, --depth=<n>
           These two options affect 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.

           The default value for --window is 10 and --depth is 50. The maximum depth is 4095.

       --threads=<n>
           This option is passed through to git pack-objects.

       --window-memory=<n>
           This option provides an additional limit on top of --window; the window size will dynamically scale
           down so as to not take up more than <n> bytes in memory. This is useful in repositories with a mix of
           large and small objects to not run out of memory with a large window, but still be able to take
           advantage of the large window for the smaller objects. The size can be suffixed with "k", "m", or
           "g".  --window-memory=0 makes memory usage unlimited. The default is taken from the pack.windowMemory
           configuration variable. Note that the actual memory usage will be the limit multiplied by the number
           of threads used by git-pack-objects(1).

       --max-pack-size=<n>
           Maximum size of each output pack file. The size can be suffixed with "k", "m", or "g". The minimum
           size allowed is limited to 1 MiB. If specified, multiple packfiles may be created, which also
           prevents the creation of a bitmap index. The default is unlimited, unless the config variable
           pack.packSizeLimit is set. Note that this option may result in a larger and slower repository; see
           the discussion in pack.packSizeLimit.

       --filter=<filter-spec>
           Remove objects matching the filter specification from the resulting packfile and put them into a
           separate packfile. Note that objects used in the working directory are not filtered out. So for the
           split to fully work, it’s best to perform it in a bare repo and to use the -a and -d options along
           with this option. Also --no-write-bitmap-index (or the repack.writebitmaps config option set to
           false) should be used otherwise writing bitmap index will fail, as it supposes a single packfile
           containing all the objects. See git-rev-list(1) for valid <filter-spec> forms.

       --filter-to=<dir>
           Write the pack containing filtered out objects to the directory <dir>. Only useful with --filter.
           This can be used for putting the pack on a separate object directory that is accessed through the Git
           alternates mechanism.  WARNING: If the packfile containing the filtered out objects is not
           accessible, the repo can become corrupt as it might not be possible to access the objects in that
           packfile. See the objects and objects/info/alternates sections of gitrepository-layout(5).

       -b, --write-bitmap-index
           Write a reachability bitmap index as part of the repack. This only makes sense when used with -a, -A
           or -m, as the bitmaps must be able to refer to all reachable objects. This option overrides the
           setting of repack.writeBitmaps. This option has no effect if multiple packfiles are created, unless
           writing a MIDX (in which case a multi-pack bitmap is created).

       --pack-kept-objects
           Include objects in .keep files when repacking. Note that we still do not delete .keep packs after
           pack-objects finishes. This means that we may duplicate objects, but this makes the option safe to
           use when there are concurrent pushes or fetches. This option is generally only useful if you are
           writing bitmaps with -b or repack.writeBitmaps, as it ensures that the bitmapped packfile has the
           necessary objects.

       --keep-pack=<pack-name>
           Exclude the given pack from repacking. This is the equivalent of having .keep file on the pack.
           <pack-name> is the pack file name without leading directory (e.g.  pack-123.pack). The option can be
           specified multiple times to keep multiple packs.

       --unpack-unreachable=<when>
           When loosening unreachable objects, do not bother loosening any objects older than <when>. This can
           be used to optimize out the write of any objects that would be immediately pruned by a follow-up git
           prune.

       -k, --keep-unreachable
           When used with -ad, any unreachable objects from existing packs will be appended to the end of the
           packfile instead of being removed. In addition, any unreachable loose objects will be packed (and
           their loose counterparts removed).

       -i, --delta-islands
           Pass the --delta-islands option to git-pack-objects, see git-pack-objects(1).

       -g<factor>, --geometric=<factor>
           Arrange resulting pack structure so that each successive pack contains at least <factor> times the
           number of objects as the next-largest pack.

           git repack ensures this by determining a "cut" of packfiles that need to be repacked into one in
           order to ensure a geometric progression. It picks the smallest set of packfiles such that as many of
           the larger packfiles (by count of objects contained in that pack) may be left intact.

           Unlike other repack modes, the set of objects to pack is determined uniquely by the set of packs
           being "rolled-up"; in other words, the packs determined to need to be combined in order to restore a
           geometric progression.

           Loose objects are implicitly included in this "roll-up", without respect to their reachability. This
           is subject to change in the future.

           When writing a multi-pack bitmap, git repack selects the largest resulting pack as the preferred pack
           for object selection by the MIDX (see git-multi-pack-index(1)).

       -m, --write-midx
           Write a multi-pack index (see git-multi-pack-index(1)) containing the non-redundant packs.

CONFIGURATION

       Various configuration variables affect packing, see git-config(1) (search for "pack" and "delta").

       By default, the command passes --delta-base-offset option to git pack-objects; this typically results in
       slightly smaller packs, but the generated packs are incompatible with versions of Git older than version
       1.4.4. If you need to share your repository with such ancient Git versions, either directly or via the
       dumb http protocol, then you need to set the configuration variable repack.UseDeltaBaseOffset to "false"
       and repack. Access from old Git versions over the native protocol is unaffected by this option as the
       conversion is performed on the fly as needed in that case.

       Delta compression is not used on objects larger than the core.bigFileThreshold configuration variable and
       on files with the attribute delta set to false.

SEE ALSO

       git-pack-objects(1) git-prune-packed(1)

GIT

       Part of the git(1) suite