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.

       --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.

       -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 could 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.

           When --unpacked is specified, loose objects are implicitly included in this "roll-up", without respect to their
           reachability. This is subject to change in the future. This option (implying a drastically different repack mode) is not
           guaranteed to work with all other combinations of option to git repack.

           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 2.39.2                                                   04/24/2023                                               GIT-REPACK(1)