git/Documentation/git-pack-objects.txt

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

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


SYNOPSIS
--------
'git-pack-objects' [--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.


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.

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