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

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

Git 2.48.1 2025-01-13 GIT-REPACK(1)