git-repack(1) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | CONFIGURATION | SEE ALSO | GIT | COLOPHON

GIT-REPACK(1)                   Git Manual                  GIT-REPACK(1)

NAME         top

       git-repack - Pack unpacked objects in a repository

SYNOPSIS         top

       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         top

       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         top

       -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         top

       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         top

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

GIT         top

       Part of the git(1) suite

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the git (Git distributed version control
       system) project.  Information about the project can be found at 
       ⟨http://git-scm.com/⟩.  If you have a bug report for this manual
       page, see ⟨http://git-scm.com/community⟩.  This page was obtained
       from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://github.com/git/git.git⟩ on 2025-02-02.  (At that time,
       the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
       repository was 2025-01-31.)  If you discover any rendering
       problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there is
       a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
       corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       man-pages@man7.org

Git 2.48.1.166.g58b580          2025-01-31                  GIT-REPACK(1)

Pages that refer to this page: git(1)git-config(1)git-fast-import(1)git-gc(1)git-pack-objects(1)git-pack-redundant(1)git-prune(1)git-prune-packed(1)git-unpack-objects(1)stg(1)gitformat-pack(5)gitpacking(7)