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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.

       -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
           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 2.34.1                                   02/26/2026                                GIT-REPACK(1)