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[=<mode>]] [--name-hash-version=<n>] [--path-walk]
[--filter=<filter-spec>] [--drop-filtered [--dry-run]]
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>
Override --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> 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).
--drop-filtered
Delete the local objects that match the --filter specification
instead of keeping them in a separate packfile, reclaiming the disk
space they occupy. This is intended for partial clones, where the
filtered objects are promisor objects that remain recoverable from
the promisor remote and are lazily re-fetched on demand when they are
next needed.
Only large blobs are supported for now, so --filter=blob:limit=<n> is
currently the only accepted filter. Because dropped objects must be
recoverable, this option requires a promisor remote to be configured
and refuses to run otherwise.
This option requires -a, and implies -d: the objects are dropped by
rebuilding the promisor pack without them and then removing the now
redundant old packs, so the redundant packs must be deleted for the
space to actually be reclaimed. It is incompatible with --filter-to
and with bitmap writing (-b/--write-bitmap-index), since filtering
breaks the single-pack closure that bitmaps require. A bitmap setting
coming from configuration is silently disabled for the duration of
the command.
As a convenience, since dropped objects remain recoverable by lazy
fetch, --drop-filtered refuses to run while another operation (merge,
rebase, am, cherry-pick, revert, or bisect) is in progress, to avoid
a surprising network fetch mid-operation, and refuses to drop any
blob that the current index references, since such a blob would only
be lazily re-fetched by the next command that inspects the working
tree. These checks are skipped in bare repositories, which have
neither a working tree nor an index.
--dry-run
Only meaningful with --drop-filtered. List the objects that would be
dropped, one object ID per line, without rebuilding any pack or
deleting anything.
-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[=<mode>]
Write a multi-pack index (see git-multi-pack-index(1)) containing the
non-redundant packs. The following modes are available:
default
Write a single MIDX covering all packs. This is the default when
--write-midx is given without an explicit mode.
incremental
Write an incremental MIDX chain instead of a single flat MIDX.
Without --geometric, a new MIDX layer is appended to the existing
chain (or a new chain is started) containing whatever packs were
written by the repack. Existing layers are preserved as-is.
When combined with --geometric, the incremental mode maintains a
chain of MIDX layers that is compacted over time using a
geometric merging strategy. Each repack creates a new tip layer
containing the newly written pack(s). Adjacent layers are then
merged whenever the newer layer's object count exceeds
1/repack.midxSplitFactor of the next deeper layer's count. Layers
that do not meet this condition are retained as-is.
The result is that newer (tip) layers tend to contain many small
packs with relatively few objects, while older (deeper) layers
contain fewer, larger packs covering more objects. Because
compaction is driven by the tip of the chain, newer layers are
also rewritten more frequently than older ones, which are only
touched when enough objects have accumulated to justify merging
into them. This keeps the total number of layers logarithmic
relative to the total number of objects.
Only packs in the tip MIDX layer are considered as candidates for
the geometric repack; packs in deeper layers are left untouched.
If the tip layer contains fewer packs than
repack.midxNewLayerThreshold, those packs are excluded from the
geometry entirely, and a new layer is created for any new pack(s)
without disturbing the existing chain.
--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 2.56.0 2026-09-27 git-repack(1)
git 2.56.0 - Generated Thu Oct 1 16:45:00 CDT 2026