SCALAR(1) Git Manual SCALAR(1)

NAME

scalar - A tool for managing large Git repositories

SYNOPSIS

scalar clone [--single-branch] [--branch <main-branch>] [--full-clone]
[--[no-]src] <url> [<enlistment>]
scalar list
scalar register [<enlistment>]
scalar unregister [<enlistment>]
scalar run ( all | config | commit-graph | fetch | loose-objects | pack-files ) [<enlistment>]
scalar reconfigure [ --all | <enlistment> ]
scalar diagnose [<enlistment>]
scalar delete <enlistment>

DESCRIPTION

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).

COMMANDS

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.

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.

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.

With the --all option, all enlistments currently registered with
Scalar will be reconfigured. Use this option after each Scalar
upgrade.

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.

SEE ALSO

git-clone(1), git-maintenance(1).

GIT

Part of the git(1) suite

Git 2.48.1 2025-01-13 SCALAR(1)