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] [--name-hash-version=<n>] [--path-walk]
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>
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.
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 2.51.0 2025-08-17 GIT-REPACK(1)
git repack \- Pack unpacked objects in a repository