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authorTaylor Blau <me@ttaylorr.com>2025-06-23 18:32:30 -0400
committerJunio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>2025-06-23 15:41:37 -0700
commitcd846bacc7dce3e71137e320adb01f5923353800 (patch)
tree31230a66095a1586985d66a44841e2b56cddba62 /Documentation/git-pack-objects.adoc
parent63195f013b845b02063b21162fa60fcfb8b631ef (diff)
downloadgit-cd846bacc7dce3e71137e320adb01f5923353800.tar.gz
pack-objects: introduce '--stdin-packs=follow'
When invoked with '--stdin-packs', pack-objects will generate a pack which contains the objects found in the "included" packs, less any objects from "excluded" packs. Packs that exist in the repository but weren't specified as either included or excluded are in practice treated like the latter, at least in the sense that pack-objects won't include objects from those packs. This behavior forces us to include any cruft pack(s) in a repository's multi-pack index for the reasons described in ddee3703b3 (builtin/repack.c: add cruft packs to MIDX during geometric repack, 2022-05-20). The full details are in ddee3703b3, but the gist is if you have a once-unreachable object in a cruft pack which later becomes reachable via one or more commits in a pack generated with '--stdin-packs', you *have* to include that object in the MIDX via the copy in the cruft pack, otherwise we cannot generate reachability bitmaps for any commits which reach that object. Note that the traversal here is best-effort, similar to the existing traversal which provides name-hash hints. This means that the object traversal may hand us back a blob that does not actually exist. We *won't* see missing trees/commits with 'ignore_missing_links' because: - missing commit parents are discarded at the commit traversal stage by revision.c::process_parents() - missing tag objects are discarded by revision.c::handle_commit() - missing tree objects are discarded by the list-objects code in list-objects.c::process_tree() But we have to handle potentially-missing blobs specially by making a separate check to ensure they exist in the repository. Failing to do so would mean that we'd add an object to the packing list which doesn't actually exist, rendering us unable to write out the pack. This prepares us for new repacking behavior which will "resurrect" objects found in cruft or otherwise unspecified packs when generating new packs. In the context of geometric repacking, this may be used to maintain a sequence of geometrically-repacked packs, the union of which is closed under reachability, even in the case described earlier. Signed-off-by: Taylor Blau <me@ttaylorr.com> Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/git-pack-objects.adoc')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/git-pack-objects.adoc10
1 files changed, 9 insertions, 1 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/git-pack-objects.adoc b/Documentation/git-pack-objects.adoc
index b1c5aa27da..eba014c406 100644
--- a/Documentation/git-pack-objects.adoc
+++ b/Documentation/git-pack-objects.adoc
@@ -87,13 +87,21 @@ base-name::
reference was included in the resulting packfile. This
can be useful to send new tags to native Git clients.
---stdin-packs::
+--stdin-packs[=<mode>]::
Read the basenames of packfiles (e.g., `pack-1234abcd.pack`)
from the standard input, instead of object names or revision
arguments. The resulting pack contains all objects listed in the
included packs (those not beginning with `^`), excluding any
objects listed in the excluded packs (beginning with `^`).
+
+When `mode` is "follow", objects from packs not listed on stdin receive
+special treatment. Objects within unlisted packs will be included if
+those objects are (1) reachable from the included packs, and (2) not
+found in any excluded packs. This mode is useful, for example, to
+resurrect once-unreachable objects found in cruft packs to generate
+packs which are closed under reachability up to the boundary set by the
+excluded packs.
++
Incompatible with `--revs`, or options that imply `--revs` (such as
`--all`), with the exception of `--unpacked`, which is compatible.