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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 | OPTIONS | CONFIGURATION | SEE ALSO | GIT | COLOPHON |
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GIT-REPACK(1) Git Manual GIT-REPACK(1)
git-repack - Pack unpacked objects in a repository
git repack [-a] [-A] [-d] [-f] [-F] [-l] [-n] [-q] [-b] [-m]
[--window=<n>] [--depth=<n>] [--threads=<n>] [--keep-pack=<pack-name>]
[--write-midx] [--name-hash-version=<n>] [--path-walk]
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.
-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>
Overrides --max-pack-size for cruft packs. Inherits the value
of --max-pack-size (if any) by default. See the documentation
for --max-pack-size for more details.
--combine-cruft-below-size=<n>
When generating cruft packs without pruning, only repack
existing cruft packs whose size is strictly less than <n>,
where <n> represents a number of bytes, which can optionally
be suffixed with "k", "m", or "g". Cruft packs whose size is
greater than or equal to <n> are left as-is and not repacked.
Useful when you want to avoid repacking large cruft pack(s) in
repositories that have many and/or large unreachable objects.
--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.
--name-hash-version=<n>
Provide this argument to the underlying git pack-objects
process. See git-pack-objects(1) for full details.
--path-walk
Pass the --path-walk option to the underlying git pack-objects
process. See git-pack-objects(1) for full details.
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.
git-pack-objects(1) git-prune-packed(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
[email protected]
Git 2.51.0.rc1 2025-08-07 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)
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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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