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HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
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NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | COMMANDS | SEE ALSO | GIT | COLOPHON |
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SCALAR(1) Git Manual SCALAR(1)
scalar - A tool for managing large Git repositories
scalar clone [--single-branch] [--branch <main-branch>] [--full-clone]
[--[no-]src] [--[no-]tags] [--[no-]maintenance] <url> [<enlistment>]
scalar list
scalar register [--[no-]maintenance] [<enlistment>]
scalar unregister [<enlistment>]
scalar run ( all | config | commit-graph | fetch | loose-objects | pack-files ) [<enlistment>]
scalar reconfigure [--maintenance=(enable|disable|keep)] [ --all | <enlistment> ]
scalar diagnose [<enlistment>]
scalar delete <enlistment>
Scalar is a repository management tool that optimizes Git for use
in large repositories. Scalar improves performance by configuring
advanced Git settings, maintaining repositories in the background,
and helping to reduce data sent across the network.
An important Scalar concept is the enlistment: this is the
top-level directory of the project. It usually contains the
subdirectory src/ which is a Git worktree. This encourages the
separation between tracked files (inside src/) and untracked
files, such as build artifacts (outside src/). When registering an
existing Git worktree with Scalar whose name is not src, the
enlistment will be identical to the worktree.
The scalar command implements various subcommands, and different
options depending on the subcommand. With the exception of clone,
list and reconfigure --all, all subcommands expect to be run in an
enlistment.
The following options can be specified before the subcommand:
-C <directory>
Before running the subcommand, change the working directory.
This option imitates the same option of git(1).
-c <key>=<value>
For the duration of running the specified subcommand,
configure this setting. This option imitates the same option
of git(1).
Clone
clone [<options>] <url> [<enlistment>]
Clones the specified repository, similar to git-clone(1). By
default, only commit and tree objects are cloned. Once
finished, the worktree is located at <enlistment>/src.
The sparse-checkout feature is enabled (except when run with
--full-clone) and the only files present are those in the
top-level directory. Use git sparse-checkout set to expand the
set of directories you want to see, or git sparse-checkout
disable to expand to all files (see git-sparse-checkout(1) for
more details). You can explore the subdirectories outside your
sparse-checkout by using git ls-tree HEAD[:<directory>].
-b <name>, --branch <name>
Instead of checking out the branch pointed to by the cloned
repository’s HEAD, check out the <name> branch instead.
--[no-]single-branch
Clone only the history leading to the tip of a single branch,
either specified by the --branch option or the primary branch
remote’s HEAD points at.
Further fetches into the resulting repository will only update
the remote-tracking branch for the branch this option was used
for the initial cloning. If the HEAD at the remote did not
point at any branch when --single-branch clone was made, no
remote-tracking branch is created.
--[no-]src
By default, scalar clone places the cloned repository within a
<entlistment>/src directory. Use --no-src to place the cloned
repository directly in the <enlistment> directory.
--[no-]tags
By default, scalar clone will fetch the tag objects advertised
by the remote and future git fetch commands will do the same.
Use --no-tags to avoid fetching tags in scalar clone and to
configure the repository to avoid fetching tags in the future.
To fetch tags after cloning with --no-tags, run git fetch
--tags.
--[no-]full-clone
A sparse-checkout is initialized by default. This behavior can
be turned off via --full-clone.
--[no-]maintenance
By default, scalar clone configures the enlistment to use
Git’s background maintenance feature. Use the --no-maintenance
to skip this configuration.
List
list
List enlistments that are currently registered by Scalar. This
subcommand does not need to be run inside an enlistment.
Register
register [<enlistment>]
Adds the enlistment’s repository to the list of registered
repositories and starts background maintenance. If
<enlistment> is not provided, then the enlistment associated
with the current working directory is registered.
Note: when this subcommand is called in a worktree that is
called src/, its parent directory is considered to be the
Scalar enlistment. If the worktree is not called src/, it
itself will be considered to be the Scalar enlistment.
--[no-]maintenance
By default, scalar register configures the enlistment to use
Git’s background maintenance feature. Use the --no-maintenance
to skip this configuration. This does not disable any
maintenance that may already be enabled in other ways.
Unregister
unregister [<enlistment>]
Remove the specified repository from the list of repositories
registered with Scalar and stop the scheduled background
maintenance.
Run
scalar run ( all | config | commit-graph | fetch | loose-objects |
pack-files ) [<enlistment>]
Run the given maintenance task (or all tasks, if all was
specified). Except for all and config, this subcommand simply
hands off to git-maintenance(1) (mapping fetch to prefetch and
pack-files to incremental-repack).
These tasks are run automatically as part of the scheduled
maintenance, as soon as the repository is registered with
Scalar. It should therefore not be necessary to run this
subcommand manually.
The config task is specific to Scalar and configures all those
opinionated default settings that make Git work more
efficiently with large repositories. As this task is run as
part of scalar clone automatically, explicit invocations of
this task are rarely needed.
Reconfigure
After a Scalar upgrade, or when the configuration of a Scalar
enlistment was somehow corrupted or changed by mistake, this
subcommand allows to reconfigure the enlistment.
--all
When --all is specified, reconfigure all enlistments currently
registered with Scalar by the scalar.repo config key. Use this
option after each upgrade to get the latest features.
--maintenance=(enable|disable|keep)
By default, Scalar configures the enlistment to use Git’s
background maintenance feature; this is the same as using the
‘enable` value for this option. Use the disable value to
remove each considered enlistment from background maintenance.
Use `keep’ to leave the background maintenance configuration
untouched for these repositories.
Diagnose
diagnose [<enlistment>]
When reporting issues with Scalar, it is often helpful to
provide the information gathered by this command, including
logs and certain statistics describing the data shape of the
current enlistment.
The output of this command is a .zip file that is written into
a directory adjacent to the worktree in the src directory.
Delete
delete <enlistment>
This subcommand lets you delete an existing Scalar enlistment
from your local file system, unregistering the repository.
git-clone(1), git-maintenance(1).
Part of the git(1) suite
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 2025-08-11. (At that time,
the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
repository was 2025-08-07.) 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 2.51.0.rc1 2025-08-07 SCALAR(1)
Pages that refer to this page: git(1)
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HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
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